


Trespass sweetly urged

by Petra



Category: Slings & Arrows
Genre: Multi, Polyamory, Polyamory Big Bang, Polyamory Negotiations, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-08
Updated: 2009-08-08
Packaged: 2017-10-04 03:23:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/pseuds/Petra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's a good thing you don't let yourselves get this involved when you're in character," Oliver said in Geoffrey's ear. "Those breeches wouldn't hide a damned thing."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trespass sweetly urged

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://polybigbang.dreamwidth.org/profile)[](http://polybigbang.dreamwidth.org/)**polybigbang**. May be an AU from canon, depending on your point of view. Thanks to Sage for beta-reading, and to Curtana, Scy, and Carla for patient reassurance and hand-holding.

The first problem was the hangover, which hit well before anyone could do anything exciting like open their eyes. It was a no-fooling-around, you're-in-pain-this-time affliction, bent on making the unwary imbiber pay for his fun with a headache, nausea that made the world spin, and a hypersensitivity to light that made the rays filtering through the curtains feel like swords.

The opening night party for Romeo and Juliet had been the stuff of legends, apparently, and like all legends it would probably look much better from the vantage point of many, many years in the future.

"Fuck," Geoffrey said, and stuck his head under the pillow without opening his eyes.

"Don't talk," Ellen protested, smacking him in the shoulder. "It just makes it worse."

"Shhhhhh," someone else agreed, which was novel enough to make Geoffrey put the pillow aside and look up, ignoring the pain.

In theory, he'd known Ellen's bed was more than big enough for three. Finding Oliver on the far edge, his hand over his eyes to block out the light, was enough of a surprise to temporarily trump the hangover. Oliver was, so far as Geoffrey had ever heard--and he was sure he would have heard--not interested in women, and this was, after all, Ellen's bed.

"Oh," Geoffrey said, too loudly, as he tried to remember any of the events that had led them there. Something about speeches, something about torches, something about kisses, but mostly it was a blur.

Ellen smacked him again. "Get me water if you're up."

"Make that two, Geoff," Oliver said fuzzily.

The sunlight sifting through the blinds was too brilliant, and the walk down to the kitchen took much longer than it should have, but it didn't take long enough to let the alcohol-drowned memories float back to life. Whatever they'd done, it hadn't left him particularly uncomfortable, but he didn't know whether to find that heartening or not.

He stood at the sink and drank three glasses of water, focusing on the confusion instead of the hangover. There had to have been some kind of discussion, somewhere along the way, but none of it was coming back to him. There had to have been something more than too many drinks and too many kisses.

There must have been a moment, at the beginning, when he had said yes and meant it. He wondered where that had come from.

Geoffrey washed his face while he was at it and found the aspirin in the cabinet with the cups and wished he'd put on some kind of clothing with pockets. There was no way to juggle all the things he needed to carry in the nude, and the more he tried to work out how to make only one trip, the more his head hurt. He took some aspirin and resigned himself to two trips, then went back upstairs, carrying one glass of water and the pills with as much care as he could manage.

He kept his eyes on the floor once he got to the bedroom so that he wouldn't trip over anyone's discarded clothing. "Oh, you angel," Ellen said when he sat beside her and gave her the water. "I can't remember how we got home." She took two aspirin and pressed the bottle into Oliver's hand, then gave him half the water.

"I don't know," Geoffrey admitted; it was part of the memory that had fallen into the abyss.

"Willow bark," Oliver said incoherently, and he tapped the empty glass. "I suppose it's my turn to make a provisions run."

Geoffrey had the sudden mental image of Oliver wandering through the house nude, which combined with an awareness that he'd just done so with no regard for neighbors, and made him rub his eyes in embarrassment. "The bathroom's the second door on the right." That was where he ought to have gone in the first place, except that there weren't any cups in the bathroom.

Oliver inclined his head very slowly and gently, as if it would explode if he moved any more quickly, and stood up carefully. "A moment," he said, and left, his unclothed skin pale as paper.

"How did that happen?" Geoffrey whispered urgently to Ellen, waving at the door.

Ellen had her eyes closed. There was a smudge of mascara on her cheek, and she looked as though she'd had a wild night, one way or another. "How did what happen?"

"Oliver."

She laughed quietly. "You invited him. Said he looked too lonely for anybody on a night like that."

It sounded like something he might have said in a charitable mood, but also like an insufficient reason to break a ten year old pattern of not sleeping with Oliver. "And you didn't talk me out of it?" Geoffrey winced at the sound of his own voice and whispered again. "What were you thinking?"

Ellen patted blindly for his leg and found his knee on the third try. "That you were right. And he's been so good to me, you know, with all the fuss of moving."

The floor in the hallway creaked before Geoffrey managed to say that that was no reason to sleep with anyone, and he still didn't know what the reason was. Oliver came back, moving with more confidence, and offered Geoffrey the glass. "Elixir of life?"

Geoffrey held up his hands. "I had enough downstairs, at least for now. Ellen?"

She opened her eyes, frowned, and sat up enough to drain the glass. "Thank you."

Oliver patted her freckled shoulder. "You're welcome. Is the word 'breakfast' appalling or appealing at this point?"

"Oh, God," Geoffrey said, remembering to say it quietly this time. "Not now."

What he most wanted to say was to demand that Oliver get dressed right this minute and go away, safely out of their space and back to relative asexuality where he belonged, but it wasn't Geoffrey's bed or house. Instead, he found his own shirt and pulled it on, hoping that Oliver would take the hint.

"You'll need to get up soon," Oliver said, somehow managing to sound both fond and condescending at the same time while he was still wearing absolutely no clothing and sitting on the same blue bed as Ellen. "Not that you made many mistakes, but call is at eleven, and it's nine."

Ellen sighed and kicked her feet over the far side of the bed, moving with her usual grace. There was a fading bruise on her right shoulder, but that was from three days earlier. "You're going to tear Tybalt to pieces, aren't you."

"Twice," Oliver said, and he finally picked up a pair of underwear that were too plain to be Ellen's and too gray to be Geoffrey's.

That was more than enough cue for Geoffrey to dress as quickly as he could, paying extremely careful attention to each of his socks and making sure that he had his eyes, which still felt ready to fall out of his head with the aftereffects of booze, firmly on his own affairs. "And tell Dennis again that the Apothecary's lines are strange enough without that whatever it is."

Oliver sighed. "His interpretation of a Turin accent, as translated from Italian to English. Yes. We'll have the discussion again."

"Thank you."

Ellen laughed. "You'd think it'd be obviously wrong, wouldn't you? Some things just aren't meant to go together."

Oliver kissed her. "I promise I'll address it. Don't be too late."

"We won't," Geoffrey promised, knowing it was futile but willing to say almost anything to convince Oliver that it was past time for him to go.

The hole in his memory was untenable. He was acting without a script at this point, and while the agreement principle of improvisation was good enough for keeping a scene going, it was no way to run a life.

The agreement reminded him to smile when Oliver, fully dressed now, came over and kissed his cheek lightly, as though he wanted something more but didn't dare to ask. It felt unfamiliar, like they hadn't so much as touched when they shared a bed. "Good luck with that, Geoff," he said, sounding no different than usual, and left.

Geoffrey sat on the bed and waited, listening to the stairs creak, and eventually the opening and closing of the front door. "I have no memories of last night, not after Mark left, and I know nobody was talking about this--" he waved his hand at the rumpled bed "--at that point. How did we get from perfectly sensible arguments about costuming to a, a threesome?"

"I don't really know, but you were fine with it then." Ellen put her arm around him. "And apparently afterward." She leaned against him, feeling as comfortable as ever. "All I remember are moments, sorry, but they're not bad moments."

Geoffrey put his head in his hands, trying to think around a headache that was only growing as time passed and wondering how strange something would have to be to show up in Ellen's fuzzy memories as a bad moment. "That's a relief," he lied, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes in hopes that that would make something work better in his head.

Ellen stroked his hair, trying to be comforting and failing. "I knew you were close, but you could've said something about how close."

He groaned. "Not that close. Ever. Really. Before, this, anyway. I have no idea what possessed me. I haven't even, it's been years since I so much as kissed a man, and God, never Oliver." He tried not to think about it, failed, and let himself fall back on the bed with a thump like poisoned Romeo on Juliet's tomb. "Fuck."

"Oh, honey." Ellen lay beside him with considerably more grace. "I still love you."

Geoffrey laughed more loudly than he meant to, winced, and buried his face in her shoulder to muffle the sound. "I hope so. You--well, you didn't protest. Did you?"

"God no!" She patted him on the head. "Oliver wouldn't take advantage of anyone. You know that. Don't you?"

He did, objectively, but the gaps in his memory were anything but objective. "Of course," he said, after too long a pause. "We should get up."

"Yes." She let him go and sat up again. "God knows I need a shower."

The phrase was both exactly what she would normally say and deeply unsettling. "Do you have any idea what we got up to, I mean, in bed?"

"Bits and pieces." Ellen got up. "I'll leave you hot water, but you'd better brush your hair before you even try to wash it."

Geoffrey lay there a few moments longer, not demanding what bits and pieces she had, and not reaching for a hairbrush, either. The earth failed to open up underneath him, which was both a shame and a relief.

*

They were late, to no one's surprise. Oliver said, "Finally," in the tone he normally used, and finished extolling the virtues of reasonable pacing to the Prince. He then addressed every other member of the company who had any kind of notes from the performance, even the Nurse's timing in the speech about her dugs, which she'd enjoyed far more than the audience had, before he so much as looked at Ellen or Geoffrey again. He'd gone home and changed, somewhere along the line, and even with a freshly pressed red shirt making his complexion ruddier, he didn't look anything like someone who'd gotten laid the night before.

"John, the company is dismissed until six except for Geoffrey and Ellen," Oliver told the stage manager at length, and off they all went, some clutching cups of coffee, others clutching their heads.

"Sorry," Ellen said, starting off as she normally did, "but the hot water ran out."

Oliver raised his eyebrows. "Rehearsing early? No, don't tell me, I don't need to know. As for your performance, Ellen, you're never this tardy, thank God. Mind your blocking in the hand-to-hand bit, though; you need to be shyer."

Ellen crossed her arms. "I wasn't exactly jumping down his throat."

"No, but the audience took a few moments too long to remember how young you were. Just that once," Oliver assured her. "Nothing terrible."

Geoffrey put his hand on Ellen's leg and squeezed reassuringly. "Should I hang back more, too?"

"Your worst moment is with Benvolio, honestly. Stop being so damned world-weary; Rosaline is a heart-breaker, but she's not the twentieth woman who's left you. Go listen to some horrible pop music and remember: the world is ending and you've never felt this way before." Oliver sniffed and flipped through his script. "Overall, you were both quite good."

Ellen stood up. "I hate it when you say that. Can't you just say 'very good' so I know you're not damning our performances with faint praise?"

Oliver closed the script, which was too worn with use to snap. "Very good, then. You'll be excellent tonight if you keep on with the same passion. Dismissed." The latter was more for the stage manager than them; John made whatever notes he needed to and strode off toward backstage.

"Thank you," Geoffrey said, and got to his feet. "I could use something resembling breakfast. And more coffee."

"Coffee," Oliver said, as though Geoffrey had mentioned the Holy Grail. "Mind if I join you?"

Ellen put her arm through Geoffrey's as they started for the doors. "Not at all."

Geoffrey coughed and said, "I'm not up for Yong's this morning." There were things he needed to say, though he had no idea how to say them, and trying to find the right words in a public place would be even more excruciating.

"There were scones in the green room earlier." Oliver followed them, lowering his voice to a more headache-conscious level. "And there's always coffee, even if it's horrible dregs by this hour."

"Scones sound good." Ellen kissed Geoffrey lightly once they were in the hall and let him go. "I'm going for a smoke. Your office, Oliver?"

"See you there," he said from closer than Geoffrey had expected. For a dizzy moment, he thought Oliver might loop his arm through Geoffrey's next, but he kept some semblance of normal space on the way to the green room.

The remaining coffee was rather burnt and there were two scones among the crumbs in the white bakery box. "I already ate," Oliver said, looking over Geoffrey's shoulder before he poured himself a half-cup of coffee. "Thank God; this is enough to put anyone off his feed."

Geoffrey took the box and held it as though he needed it for his next move, upstage or downstage, but he didn't know the line and couldn't work out where to go. "I have no idea what happened last night," he admitted after a moment.

There was a clatter as Oliver dropped the communal spoon used for stirring enough sugar into the coffee to make it drinkable. "Oh," he said, and picked it up. "There was a play," he began, overly didactic. "And then people went to this place called a bar."

"Fuck you." Geoffrey took one of the styrofoam cups and poured off the rest of the coffee. "You know what I meant."

Oliver put his hand on Geoffrey's shoulder and switched to a more honest mode, studying his face. "You really don't remember?"

"No!" Geoffrey shrugged off the touch and dumped half the sugar bowl into his cup. Ellen would make faces, but he needed the extra boost at this point. "Nothing. Not even the part where I--" he cleared his throat "--invited you over."

"Good lord, Geoff." Oliver leaned on the table. "That's a blow to the ego, I don't mind telling you."

Geoffrey set the coffee down before he threw it at Oliver, which seemed like a much better option than talking to him. "It's not about you. It's not, or it'd be about Ellen, and it's not about her either. I just don't know what happened, and it's driving me crazy."

"All right, all right, I'll give you a full summary, but not in here." Oliver took the bakery box. "Bring your coffee. At least my office door locks."

"Ellen doesn't remember everything either." The thought of a locked office wasn't that frightening, not really, but they'd all got into this mess together and Geoffrey wanted reinforcements.

Oliver sighed. "You young people have no head for drink. Come on, darling, she'll be back in a few minutes."

Geoffrey picked up his coffee, willed his hands to stop shaking, and followed Oliver toward the offices. He wasn't prepared for Anna's bright, "Good morning! Great reviews, Geoffrey!" but he managed to take one hand off his cup and wave anyway.

"Thanks. Good morning."

"I'll show you copies once you're awake enough to read," Oliver promised, and opened the door, ushering Geoffrey in.

Finding a place to sit was more complicated than it ought to be. There were three chairs including the one behind the desk, but choosing any of them was temporarily beyond him. "So," he said once Oliver had closed the door. "It wasn't horrible, then."

"Horrible!" Oliver set the scones on his desk and stood by him. "I should hope not. You seemed enthusiastic at the time, if a bit inebriated."

"A bit." Geoffrey laughed, bit his lip, and drank some of the coffee and sugar sludge. It was as hideous as ever.

"Not enough that I expected this." Oliver sighed and drank some of his own coffee. "This isn't just some sort of denial?"

Geoffrey winced. "You didn't--that wasn't--it's not some kind of gay panic, no. I've done that before. Well, not that, exactly, not with Ellen, but I'm not--" he shrugged, trying to figure out how to sum up a lot of ill-advised sex, spread over several years, with someone he refused to acknowledge a friendship with at this point. "Whatever happened, I've probably done it before."

"Ah." Oliver waited for a moment as though he expected Geoffrey to give him a detailed list of who and what and when. "You did offer," he said eventually. "Are you sorry?"

"How the hell should I know?" Geoffrey rolled his eyes. The problem wasn't what happened so much as that it hadn't before. "I don't even know what went on, and if you're both going to be coy about it, I guess I won't, but I'm not going to be sorry for something I don't even remember. I'll just pretend that whatever it was, it wasn't worth talking about."

There were two quick knocks at the door and Ellen opened it. "Geoff, keep your voice down. It echoes down the hall."

"Sorry," he answered in a stage whisper. "Come have a stale scone."

Ellen shut the door. "Are you upset?"

"Yes." Geoffrey leaned on Oliver's desk, creasing papers and not caring a damn. "But not because of last night. It's because you think it's funny I don't remember," he said, and waved at her, "and you don't even believe me," to Oliver, who frowned.

"I do," Oliver said quickly. "It's just strange."

Ellen leaned next to him and touched his arm. "It wasn't that, well, intimate in the end."

"That depends on your definition, darling," Oliver corrected her. Any second now they were going to be off on a discussion of exactly what one should and should not do on stage to suggest sexual contact.

Geoffrey said, "Stop there. Please. And tell me exactly what happened, or I'm going to pretend I've never even met either of you, let alone whatever it is you're going to tell me."

Ellen raised her eyebrows at Oliver, who gestured for her to say something. She shook her head. "Mostly, a lot of kissing." Oliver said. "You weren't up for that much more."

"That much more?" Geoffrey frowned at him. "How did we all end up naked from 'a lot of kissing'?"

Ellen smiled wistfully and nudged Geoffrey with her shoulder. "You went down on me, I remember that much. For a long time."

Oliver coughed and looked at the wall. "You have impressive stamina, I'll give you that."

"And what were you doing?" Geoffrey asked him. "More of that completely not intimate really kissing?"

"I didn't say it wasn't," Oliver said defensively. "But essentially, well, yes." He glanced at Ellen as if for corroboration, then looked back at Geoffrey quickly.

"Essentially." Geoffrey sighed. "What the hell does that mean?"

"Oh, please." Oliver's mouth twisted in amusement. "I promise you, if I'd given you a blowjob, you'd damned well remember it, let alone anything else."

Geoffrey searched for anything in his memory that matched this patchy account. "I'm almost sure that's true. And you stayed because?"

"You kept promising to do something or other as soon as you'd caught your breath, and then I fell asleep." Oliver shrugged as if this were a perfectly normal thing to do. "I wasn't exactly sober either."

"Why didn't you just say so?" Geoffrey asked Ellen. "You could've stopped me from worrying."

Ellen held up her hands. "You're the one--the ones, sorry, Oliver--who didn't have sex. My memories are a lot rosier."

"God." Geoffrey took a deep breath and tried to work out whether he was more relieved that nothing particularly new had happened without his remembering it, or annoyed that they hadn't bothered to do something fascinating while his inhibitions were drowned. "All right. And that's it?"

"That and a few hours of sleeping in an overcrowded bed, yes." Oliver smiled crookedly. "I've had worse nights."

"I bet." Geoffrey opened the bakery box and took a scone. "Well. That was anticlimactic."

"Literally," Oliver said, and wincing at that was practically traditional.

Ellen said, "Was there coffee?" and Geoffrey gave her the thick remnants in his cup. "God, that's horrible. Are you sure you wouldn't rather go to Yong's?"

Geoffrey bit the scone, coughed on crumbs, and wrinkled his nose. "If you're up for it."

"You haven't seen the reviews yet," Oliver protested.

"Bring them along," Geoffrey said, and tossed the scone toward his wastebasket.

*

"I told you they'd notice," Oliver said for the third time about the Toronto Star reviewer's line about Mercutio's speech, and the way it played better in the background.

"Of course they noticed." Geoffrey shook the xerox of the local paper's review, which was only slightly transparent with bacon grease fingerprints. "And some of them hated it."

Ellen rolled her eyes. "Do you always take reviews this much to heart, Geoff?"

"Yes," Geoffrey said, just as Oliver said it for him more loudly. He handed Oliver the page and said, "It's not so much taking it to heart as it is looking at the distilled audience response. No one else is going to write about what they thought, so we may as well pay attention to the ones who do."

"None of them had a bad word to say about you." Oliver shrugged.

The waitress came over and refilled Ellen's heavy mug before she noticed it. "Oh, sorry, we were actually ready for the check."

"All right, then." The waitress gave them each a scrawled slip.

"Thanks," Geoffrey said, and gave her an apologetic smile. Once she'd gone, he looked at the sheaf of reviews and said, "One or two of them did mention that we're a little old to be doing this show."

"Which we are." Ellen took out her purse and dumped a handful of change on the table, then picked out all the loonies. "I don't like these things," she said, and held up one of the two dollar coins. "They're ugly."

Oliver patted her shoulder. "Don't worry, darling. In this profession, we don't see enough of any kind of money to get used to it." He counted out his tip with more precision, mumbling numbers under his breath, then stood. "I'd better be getting back."

"What do you have to do? Everything's set for tonight." Ellen got up. "Things for next season?"

"And a few other projects." Oliver shrugged. "The show may be going on, but the theater doesn't run itself."

Geoffrey glanced at Ellen's diminished change, left an indiscriminate handful of his own, and picked up his check. "We should go over those sections again, too," he said to Ellen. "Make sure we've got them youthful enough."

"For that, I'll put off the paperwork a bit longer." Oliver wrinkled his nose at the specter of boredom and went to pay his check.

Ellen said in Geoffrey's ear, "Was that a pick up line?"

"Mine or his?"

"Either."

Geoffrey said in her ear, "Mine was. I have no idea about him at this point."

Ellen put her arm around his waist and walked with him to pay. Once they were outside, where Oliver was waiting, she said, "I don't want to go back to the Rose yet."

Oliver fell into step with them, though the sidewalk wasn't wide enough for three all the way along, what with the street signs. "Perhaps the banks of the Ganges North, then. The weather might help things along."

It was a sunny day, and not overwhelmingly muggy. Nothing about it suggested youthfulness to Geoffrey, but he didn't want to commit to spending all day inside either. "That would work."

"Wait, where?" Ellen asked.

"Just the river," Geoffrey assured her. "Oliver has these little jokes with himself that no one else has ever found funny."

Oliver pulled a face at him. "You laughed the first time."

"It had shock value." Geoffrey shrugged and tried not to think of a lot of things, including how long it had been since he first heard Oliver's jokes.

Not thinking was not one of his skills, and when Ellen said, "It's cute, really," and Oliver demurred, Geoffrey took the chance to dwell on all the foolishness that made up the day.

Oliver had a way of taking up all of Geoffrey's time, what with the staging arguments, the characterization arguments, the costuming arguments, and the general arguments. The only moments he had to himself, most of the time, were the ones when he was asleep. Or, lately, with Ellen.

There weren't many times when they talked about the parts of life that had nothing to do with the stage, for the straightforward reason that those were few and far between. When they had, no one had ever mentioned that someday, it might be nice if they ended up sleeping together. But somehow, Geoffrey had slipped last night, Oliver had said yes, and they'd fallen into bed. With, apparently, quite a lot of kissing. The kissing itself was still lost in the fog of his memory, but he was willing to believe it. Kissing in and of itself was a practice he approved of heartily.

On that thought, he kissed Ellen's cheek, and she laughed and kissed him back. "I hate the swan boats," she said, as they got close enough to the river to see one. "I always feel like they're judging me."

"If they are, they're jealous of you," Oliver said. Geoffrey considered saying something about projection, but didn't.

Kissing Oliver seemed improbable in the still-harsh light of day, but only in the sense that Geoffrey had no idea what catalyst had pushed them over the edge. He wasn't in the habit of asking what his motivation was when he was in character; one of the benefits of having the text to work with, especially when it was as classic as Shakespeare, was that he could always figure out a way into the character, no matter how brief the moment. He wanted to ask what his own personal motivation was at this point, but he didn't know who to ask or how to phrase the question so no one would think he was losing his mind.

For all Ellen was lovely, and she was every bit as lovely as he could want her to be, she didn't know him well enough to explain to him what had gone through his head. Three months and enough sex to start an army was a solid foundation for a lot of things, including the Romeo he could have done in his sleep at this point, but it wasn't enough to explicate the finer points of proposing a threesome to someone whom he depended on for a lot of things, often enjoyed talking to, and sometimes didn't particularly like.

"All right, you two," Oliver said as they found a flat space near the river. "Youth. Driven, lustful youth."

And they were off, beginning at the beginning, but Geoffrey's heart wasn't in it for once.

He had too many questions, still, and the only person he'd trust for that kind of in-depth analysis of his psyche was, irony of ironies, Oliver. Even so, Geoffrey knew him too well to believe he'd necessarily say what he thought. When it was to Oliver's advantage to lie, he'd do it, with enough smoothness to make one wonder why he wasn't the one on stage.

Also, there was the question of what Ellen would say, precisely, if Geoffrey cornered Oliver for a better version of that conversation they hadn't managed to have, especially if he tried to make sure she wasn't nearby. Not that he thought a lot could embarrass Ellen, at this point, but he wasn't sure that Oliver was above embarrassing him to an inch of his life if he thought it would improve any number of things: the play, the scene, the moment, the way Geoffrey decided to react to him.

That latter was especially telling, and "Palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss," wasn't in it. The mystery was enough to make him consider bribing one of the bartenders to find out what anyone else had seen or heard. Nobody had done anything strange while Oliver was giving interminable notes earlier, so Geoffrey was pretty sure that whatever had happened, it hadn't made much of a scene, but that just made the whole thing worse. If he'd bent Oliver over backward and planted a big smooch on him in front of God and everybody, then someone in the company would've said something.

Probably.

Geoffrey had woken up in one of the chairs in Oliver's office enough times that it might not even spur Rumor, painted in tongues, anymore, and that left Geoffrey with no recourse but the source.

"Better, Ellen," Oliver said, and he gave Geoffrey a look that had more notes in than he needed.

It was overall healthier to focus on kissing Juliet, lithe, nubile Juliet, and be nothing more than a teenager in love for the time being, than to dwell a moment longer on the unsolvable mysteries.

"Oh, Geoff," Ellen said at the end of a scene, and kissed him ad lib.

For a moment, he barely recognized his own name, but then he heard Oliver clapping, and he knew they'd nailed whatever finer points of youth and beauty they'd missed before. "I have to get back," Oliver said regretfully as Ellen let Geoffrey go.

"I want to talk to you about Balthasar," Geoffrey said, picking entirely at random from the scenes Ellen wasn't in.

"Oh?" Oliver raised his eyebrows, glanced at Ellen, and turned toward the theater. "Do tell."

"I'd rather go home for a bit," Ellen said, though she was keeping pace with them. "I don't know how you two manage to care about these shows after you've talked them to death for the fiftieth time."

Geoffrey kissed her lightly. "An unholy love of analysis. I'll see you later."

"Unholy is right." Oliver rolled his eyes, but the look was more affectionate than annoyed. "Balthasar?"

"It has to do with the level of desperation Romeo's feeling then." Geoffrey weighed the ways he would normally present the scene and went for one of the extreme outliers. "It's like he's been waiting by the telephone for days, and all of a sudden it rings, except that instead of telephones, he has Balthasar."

Ellen laughed and took Geoffrey's hand. "Poor Balthasar."

"The bearer of ill tidings indeed."

"I could try crying," Geoffrey offered. "I mean, there's Romeo, with the phone finally ringing. He has twenty questions to ask and the first answer he gets is that the world is ending and Juliet is dead."

"You could cry, at that." Oliver gave him a tight smile. "The audience is expecting that sort of thing."

"And it wouldn't be over the top, or it would, but it's Romeo. He's not going to take that kind of news well."

"Of course not." Ellen squeezed his hand. "I'll take this way home. See you later." She kissed Geoffrey again and turned down a different street.

Oliver cleared his throat when she was three houses away, and Geoffrey stopped watching her go. "This is old news, darling."

"I know, I know." Geoffrey ran a hand through his hair. "But I couldn't think of anything else that would be boring enough on short notice."

"I was half-expecting you to call out the props department for the bright blue poison. I already had a word with them about it. But Balthasar? Weeping?"

Geoffrey kept his eyes on his path, which was much better than looking at Oliver and meant he managed not to run into three separate pedestrians while he tried to get the next phrase to make sense in his head. "What did I say to you last night, really?"

"Oh, that," as if all of this were normal. Oliver's hand brushed his, not in any sort of romantic gesture, but merely from avoiding a grating. "You didn't confess your undying love for me, if that's what you're worried about."

Geoffrey laughed at the sheer absurdity of the image. "No, of course not, but what did I say?"

"'How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you from seasons such as these?'" Oliver said, his diction more clipped than normal. "It wasn't the most romantic proposition I've ever heard."

If he had let himself theorize about it, that would be just the sort of thing he expected Oliver to say. "I did not."

"Oh, you did. And then you patted my hand and said, 'Let me ask you one word in private,' except that it was four: 'Come home with us.' And not a question."

Geoffrey ran his hand through his hair and swore in his heart that if Ellen had no memory of all of this nonsense, he would leave the festival, possibly even the province, in order to spite Oliver. He knew he was lying about that, but there had to be some kind of consequence. "Really."

"It was sweet, in a twisted way." Oliver patted his shoulder. "And it more than made up for the fact that you were staggering and leaning on me all the way there."

"You probably enjoyed that," Geoffrey accused him.

Oliver opened the door to the theater's offices and gave him an excessively knowing smile. "Immensely. Did you need to talk about Balthasar any more, darling?"

That was his cue to go home, to kiss Ellen, to pretend that this had all been a huge misstep and that it would never happen again. If he did that, though, he wouldn't have any idea what had really happened, or what it had felt like. "Yes."

"Well, then." Oliver dropped his voice. "This time, I really will lock my office door."

"I should give you time to work," Geoffrey said, but it was too late by then; he was already following Oliver inside.

"You probably should," Oliver admitted.

"Hello again," Anna said as they walked by her desk. "There's mail for you." She got up and handed it to Oliver.

"Thank you," he said, with a tight smile, and kept walking.

There were still excuses Geoffrey could make, he knew that, but instead he said, "And Benvolio keeps talking over me. 'What sadness lengthens Romeo's hours?' is hardly the most important line in that scene."

Oliver laughed and waved him into the office. "I'll remind him to breathe before it tonight," he said, and shut the door.

The sound of the lock clicking into place overrode every spurious or real complaint Geoffrey could have made about the production. "I, um," he said, searching for anything. "Ellen's wonderful."

"She is," Oliver agreed, and put his hand on Geoffrey's shoulder, as lightly as if he expected some sort of protest.

"I don't remember kissing you at all." Geoffrey wasn't at all sure he wanted to do this, sober, or exactly what Ellen would say when he told her about it, but the gaps in his memory were too annoying to leave bare.

Oliver smiled and touched his cheek, still with the same gentleness. It made Geoffrey want to bolt in mock horror and call it all off; kissing was one thing, but there was a friendship on the line in all of this, leaving aside the question of anything professional. "We can do something about that," Oliver said, and did.

There was nothing earth-shattering in it: a light kiss, far more timid than anything Geoffrey would have expected of Oliver, hardly more than a brush of lips. It might even play in Peoria with that kind of restraint.

Geoffrey laughed, in part to cover the jump in his heartrate at how strange this still felt, and in part because it was hysterical on the face of it. "There's no way in hell you were that polite last night."

"Well, no." Oliver let him go and took a step back. "But you were much more cooperative."

"And drunk."

Oliver winced and looked at the wall rather than at Geoffrey. "In vino veritas, darling."

Geoffrey folded his arms and pushed harder, trying to find the point where Oliver stopped treating this like a game. "You kiss by the book."

Oliver spluttered and glared at him in the middle of a laugh. "Not when I mean it."

"Well?"

There was a moment when Geoffrey was expecting to end up pressed against the wall, breathless and terrified, with Anna running in any second to find out who'd broken something.

Oliver raised his eyebrows and stood there like he didn't know his line. "And your wonderful Ellen? You can't blame it on booze this morning."

His words were only logical, and in and of themselves they didn't constitute any more of a rejection than Geoffrey's jibe, but they were infuriating. "As if she'd mind." Geoffrey caught Oliver's shoulder, registering the fabric under his fingers before he realized what he meant to do, and kissed him with all the fervor they hadn't had a moment before.

There were a thousand debates in the kiss over things that mattered and things that didn't, and a thousand compromises afterward, coming to something akin to actual understanding. The question stopped being "What did we do?" and started being "Why didn't we do this before?" much more quickly than Geoffrey would've credited.

By the time they broke apart, it was extremely difficult to breathe. Oliver was flushed, Geoffrey's hair was most of the way to being a bird's nest, and there was a general sense of impending nudity. "That was much better," Oliver said after a few moments, his voice gratifyingly shaky. "The, ah. The impetuousness of, of youth."

"You are such an ass," Geoffrey said, and if Oliver had done anything but give notes, it would have been simpler than thought to kiss him again immediately. "Was that more like last night?"

"Better," Oliver said, and he was regaining his equilibrium as much as Geoffrey was: poorly and slowly. "You're not so sloppy when you're sober."

Geoffrey closed his eyes and took a deep breath, willing the rush of desire to go the hell away. This wasn't the time or the place for anything more involved. "I should've gone with Ellen."

"I don't think that's true at all." Oliver smiled at him. There was enough sweetness in his expression to make an audience's teeth rot, and enough pain to make it believable. "You'd still be wondering, then, wouldn't you? Whether it was all a terrible idea."

"I'm not sure about that yet."

"Well," Oliver said, with more confidence, and the third kiss was less fierce than the second, and veered more into the territory of making out than proving a point.

It felt more natural than it should to lean on him, even a little, and trust that he wasn't going to do something sudden and strange to make Geoffrey react. The kiss itself was doing more than enough in that department. Geoffrey's voice sounded entirely too rough when he spoke. "God, I should've gone."

"Why?" At least he wasn't alone in sounding like he'd gargled with gravel.

Geoffrey sighed and tried to let him go. "Kissing is one thing. One thing that's, yes, thank you, much better than I expected, but it's not--I can explain this much to her."

"Oh, now," Oliver said, and he sounded far less offended than Geoffrey had expected. "If you'd stayed awake last night--" He put his hand on Geoffrey's hip.

"Don't." Geoffrey felt him freeze with reassuring speed. "You should have lied more elaborately when you had the chance."

Oliver's expression was somewhere between lust denied and indignation, shading quickly toward the latter. "I didn't lie to you about any of it."

"And I won't either." Geoffrey kissed his cheek to soften the rejection and backed off, resolutely keeping his eyes on Oliver's face. There were things he didn't need to see to know, but it was still better not to glance down. "I'm not doing this behind Ellen's back."

"Ah." Oliver wiped his mouth with his fingers, lingering more than was strictly necessary. "And what about in front of her?"

That would mean explaining even vaguely about this incident without making light of it, and admitting that it had been a damn shame to drink as much as he had. Even so, Geoffrey had no idea what Ellen would say. It might very well be one thing to lend out a pillow for the night and another entirely to sit idly by while they bickered, because they couldn't do a damned thing without bickering, and--and whatever else happened, which Geoffrey refused to contemplate in detail at this point. If he contemplated too hard, it would be too easy to stay behind the locked door and go through with things.

"I don't know," Geoffrey said, speaking for his interpretation of Ellen as much as anything else. "I don't even know what she said last night about anything."

"She laughed," Oliver said, and spread his hands. "And she kissed me, which was all very well, if that happens to be to your taste." He cleared his throat. "It wasn't the highlight of my evening."

Geoffrey ran his hand through his hair in the hopes of getting it somewhat more orderly. "She thought it was all a joke, then. Probably."

"Possibly." Oliver waved his hand. "I don't know her very well. But then again, neither do you."

The truth of the statement didn't make it any easier to hear. "I like her better than I like you," Geoffrey said, aiming for some kind of detachment. If he couldn't lower the tension, he might as well break it.

The attempt backfired. Oliver said, "Oh, bullshit," and kissed him again.

There was a fleeting moment in which Geoffrey wanted him to stop, but it was mostly based in simple self-preservation, and everything else won against that.

"That's enough," Geoffrey said, some handful of minutes later, over the sound of his heart in his ears. "I have to go. Now."

"Do you have the first idea how long I've been waiting to do that?" Oliver asked, still too close. "Don't leave yet."

He didn't ask how long, and didn't want the answer. "I have to." Geoffrey caught his hands and pushed them away, then recalculated, giving himself enough time to calm the fuck down. "In five minutes. And don't kiss me again, or I'll, I'll, I'll weep on Benvolio's shoulder tonight and ruin his costume with eyeliner."

Oliver's smile was too knowing to be anything but annoying, which was in itself a relief. "Five minutes without kissing?"

Geoffrey cleared his throat. "Or saying anything about it. Or anything related. At all."

Something in that got through to Oliver. He closed his eyes briefly and gave Geoffrey some semblance of personal space. "Sorry. But that means we can't even talk about R and J--or your upcoming directorial debut."

"Next season, then." Geoffrey cast about for appropriately somber thoughts, anything that would help him keep his mind off of what they'd just done. That was ironic in itself: he hadn't been able to think of much else when he hadn't known what had happened, and filling in the blanks wasn't helping at all.

"Oh, that would be telling." Oliver hesitated all of a breath before he said, "You told me a hundred times that you're too old for Romeo and Ellen's far past Juliet."

Geoffrey nodded. "It's still true. Just because it's too late to do anything about it but quit doesn't make it less true."

Oliver waved this away. "Well, pretend we've already had all the arguments for next season, all right?"

"She's no Miranda."

"No. But Ophelia, perhaps?"

The suggestion made Geoffrey as weak in the knees as any of the kissing. He caught himself on Oliver's shoulder and glowered at him. "You're actually planning this. Promise me that."

Oliver's smile was devious enough for Iago. "The board hasn't officially approved the season yet."

That made it another game, but Geoffrey was willing to play this one. "Who exactly do I have to blow to get this to work?"

The way Oliver spluttered was more than gratifying, as was the moment before he had a response. "I hesitate to say 'have to,' but I have a suggestion."

"Not now." Geoffrey patted his shoulder, pretending to be comforting. "But you're serious?"

"About Ellen's Ophelia? Absolutely." Oliver's voice was steady enough to make Geoffrey suspicious.

"Damn it, Oliver. Are you going to make me fucking audition?"

Geoffrey wouldn't have said that he'd seen Oliver entirely sincere enough times in the decade they'd known each other to recognize the expression, but there it was. "As if I'd give it to anyone else."

It was counterproductive to cross the space and kiss him again, and not at all a good idea, but there was a time and a place for self-restraint and this was patently neither. Even the sweetest kiss didn't answer all of Geoffrey's questions, though. "How long have you been planning this?"

"I've been waiting for you to be ready. And you will be." Oliver smiled at him, his eyes bright. "You'll be amazing."

Geoffrey shivered and did his level best to think of Ellen, of the fact that he'd let his lease lapse last week and that it would be nice to have a place to sleep. "How long?"

"Oh, nine years. Or so." Oliver took a steadying breath. "Were you leaving?"

"Before you distracted me." Geoffrey licked his lips and reclaimed a few inches of space. "And if you want her for Ophelia, I'm going to talk to her. Or it'll be even messier than it's supposed to be."

"Yes, all right." Oliver gave him a brief but apparently heartfelt smile. "But let me tell her."

Geoffrey sighed melodramatically, though he could see the justice in it. "All right. This once."

"Go on," Oliver said gently. "Before you distract me again."

*

Geoffrey got as far as "Hello" before Ellen tackled him onto the couch, kissing him with a passion that made it difficult to think all over again.

"I missed you." She opened his pants with deft fingers, kissing him again. "Did you get everything worked out?"

"Mostly." Geoffrey ran his hand up her thigh under her skirt, trying to find a way to say what he needed to say without breaking the mood. The mood might be pretty durable, at that; she was slick against his fingers.

Ellen shivered and pushed against him. "Condoms on the coffee table," she said, arching her back.

It was just as well that they'd spent an afternoon putting Venetian blinds on the windows in the living room. It had been after the third time they did it on the couch without more than those filmy useless curtains, but it was a good change.

"Got it." He took one and didn't manage to open it before she had her shirt off.

Everything else in the world was less interesting than Ellen's breasts, kissing them and taking her bra off, licking her nipples until she hit his shoulder and said, "God, stop, condom, now."

His hands were shaking less than hers, if only just, and it only took a moment before she was sinking down on him, sighing and squeezing him tight enough to make him clutch at her. "Oh, fuck."

"Please. Yes." Geoffrey got his hands up her skirt again, one against the wet heat of her clit and the other braced on her hip for balance. They'd rolled off the couch before, and he couldn't take any more mistakes today.

"You feel so amazing." She tugged on his hair, pulled his willing mouth back to her breast, and rolled her hips until she groaned. "Wanted you all fucking morning."

He hummed his agreement against her nipple and met her downward thrust, hitting the right rhythm and keeping it as she lost her breath.

"Nn, yes." Ellen dug her fingers into his shoulders and leaned back, pulling her breast free of his mouth, as she came for the first time. She was incredibly beautiful like that, muscles tense and face full of wonder, and he wanted to keep her that way forever.

He wanted to compliment her, but the only words that came to him were, "Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright," and the pace was driven entirely by her movement on him, around him.

Ellen laughed and leaned forward to kiss him. "God, you're wonderful," she said, sounding half-drunk with pleasure. "Don't stop."

"I can't remember the next line," Geoffrey protested.

"Not that." Ellen ground against him, kissed him hard enough that he gasped, and moaned in the back of her throat, shuddering through another orgasm.

It was enough to pull him along with her, thrusting up for that last perfect second before he couldn't make himself move, before all he could do was hold her and lose himself in the way she felt.

"Hi," Ellen said after a few minutes, and kissed him again.

The kiss reminded Geoffrey indirectly that he had toes, and that somewhere they were clenched pretty tightly. "Ow. Hi."

"Sorry." She held the condom's edges and got up with her normal grace, then tossed him a box of tissues and sat on the floor next to the couch, leaning against it. "God, you're wonderful."

"So are you." He leaned over and kissed the top of her head before he dealt with the mess, then threw the whole lot in the trash by the coffee table. "Possibly the word I'm looking for is 'amazing and vital.'" The line was from one of her reviews, and it made her laugh.

"I do my best." Ellen reached up and patted his chest. "If you sit up, I can sit with you."

"Ah." A few moments later, he had his pants on properly again and she was leaning against him, naked from the waist up and looking entirely pleased with the world. It wasn't a good time to bring up something that would probably make her angry, but it was better than any other times he could think of offhand. "So, um."

"Mm?" Ellen ran her fingers through his hair, then narrowed her eyes when he didn't say something immediately. "What?"

Geoffrey cleared his throat and took her hand, lacing their fingers together. "I--" he swallowed hard, wished he had a glass of water, and rapped out the words as quickly as he could. "I didn't remember what kissing Oliver was like and I tried it, just kissing, and it turns out I liked it more than I thought I would."

"Oh." Ellen squeezed his hand. "Liked it more than this?"

"No!" Geoffrey put his arm around her. "Not at all. No. Just, well, a lot."

She patted his shoulder. "Let me go? I can't have this conversation without a shirt on, sorry."

"Oh. Sorry." Geoffrey helped her sit up and stared at the coffee table while she got dressed, tapping his fingers on his knees. "So, um."

Ellen blew out her breath and sat down again a full cushion away, fully clothed except for her persistent lack of underwear. "Are you breaking up with me?"

"God, I don't think so." Geoffrey offered her his hand. "I'm not gay."

"I didn't think so." Ellen put her hand in his. "Jesus, Geoff. You could've said something."

He coughed. "I tried."

Ellen shook her head. "I don't mean last night, and really, Lear? That's what you use to get someone into bed?"

"I was drunk. Really, really drunk. I didn't want him in bed in the first place, except for how I apparently did on some level." Geoffrey frowned at the world in general and Ellen specifically. He didn't necessarily expect her to understand what was going on; he didn't either, but it would have been nice if someone did. "It was a stupid, drunken mistake."

"Which you repeated by kissing him today. Were you drunk then?"

"No." Geoffrey let her hand go and buried his face in his hands. "I just wanted to know what I'd done that I couldn't remember doing. I hate not knowing what happened."

"So you kissed him."

"Yes." Geoffrey sighed. He wanted to tell her Oliver's news, anything to make this all seem less sordid, but he'd promised.

Ellen seemed to be working through it all again just in case she'd missed something. "You asked Oliver, our director, your friend--he is your friend?"

"Yes, of course he's my friend."

"You invited him to bed, and you waited until this morning to kiss him?" Ellen patted him on the shoulder. "Sorry, but that's backwards, isn't it?"

Geoffrey snorted and flopped back against the couch. "Apparently I kissed him then, too, but I don't know. And you were distracted."

She smiled. "You were very distracting."

"Are you mad?"

Ellen patted his knee. "I didn't argue when you invited him over, remember?"

Geoffrey rolled his eyes. "No, I don't remember. That's the problem."

"Well, I didn't." Ellen leaned against his shoulder. It felt like forgiveness. "I like him. Not like that, much, but he's a good director."

"Sometimes," Geoffrey allowed. "When he's not caught up in his own ego."

"Did anything else happen I should know about?"

"No." Geoffrey heard the question again in the context of their discussion, and shuddered, both with the thought of having to make that kind of confession and with the certain knowledge of how close a call it had been. "No, I wouldn't do that to you."

"Wouldn't do which to me?" Ellen gave him the clear-eyed look she tended to get after sex, right around when he was beginning to fall asleep, though the latter wasn't a problem at the moment. "So you don't remember, sorry, but like I said, I didn't mind, Geoffrey, when you invited him over. For the night. In my bed."

Geoffrey closed his eyes and thought of fair Verona, which didn't help his presence of mind in the least. "That was nice of you."

"It wasn't nice." Ellen smacked his shoulder. "I'm never nice. I was afraid you were going to go with him if I tried to stop you. Were you?"

"How the fuck should I know?" It came out louder than he meant it to. "Sorry. I just don't know. I've never kissed him before."

"Right. Sorry. I like you, that's all."

"I like you, too." Geoffrey put his arm around her and relaxed a little when she didn't pull away. "A lot."

Ellen sighed. "And I'd rather have Oliver or whoever sleeping with us than just you, if you're getting bored."

Geoffrey kissed her with every intent of making his words redundant, and eventually said, "I'm not bored."

She smiled at him, but it looked sad. "You're already inviting people over."

"I don't know what the hell that was about." Geoffrey scowled at the specter of his previously inebriated self and forbore to wonder further about his motivations.

"But you liked kissing him," Ellen insisted.

"Yes. All right?" Geoffrey shrugged. "I didn't like it more than I like kissing you, and I won't do it again."

"Jesus, Geoff." Ellen rolled her eyes and held up her fingers as she counted. "One, I don't mind that much if you want to, as long as you don't do it when I'm not there. Two, it's okay, if you really want to, to invite him over again. Maybe when you're sober. Three, it's okay if this person you're inviting over is Oliver, because he's probably not going to make a big thing about it, because he already didn't."

"I'm not sure." Geoffrey glanced at the clock. "We have to be there in an hour. And it's, well. He's my friend, but not like that."

Ellen stood up. "I've worked with more than enough people who were my friends right up until I kissed them that I'm wouldn't be sure that's true anymore, sweetie."

"I've known him for a fucking decade. It won't be like that." Geoffrey folded his arms and hoped as hard as he could that she was wrong, even though chances were reasonably good that she wasn't. Apart from anything else, Ellen had slept with more people than he had by an order of magnitude.

"I hope not, but if it is, well." Ellen spread her hands. "The invitation's open. As long as you're not falling-down drunk, because I can deal with your deciding to relive the magic by kissing him, but don't try coming home some day and telling me you fucked in his office because you didn't remember what it was like."

Geoffrey groaned and tried not to think about it again. "Thanks for the mental image."

Ellen raised her eyebrows. "You didn't, did you?"

"No. God, no. I wouldn't lie to you."

She bent over and kissed his forehead. "Well, that's a good place to start. I'm going to shower. We should get ready to go."

*

"I'm really rather busy, Geoff," Oliver said when Geoffrey stuck his head into the office.

"I just had one question." It wasn't precisely true, but one would be enough to go on with for a while.

Oliver marked his place in his paperwork with a fingertip and said, "Yes? What is it?"

Geoffrey shut the door and asked, keeping his voice down so the whole office area didn't hear, "Will you hate me if I never kiss you again?"

It took Oliver twenty seconds to start breathing again, and then another ten to answer. "Of course not." The time lag didn't lend to his credibility.

"Are you sure?"

"I don't have time for this, I love you dearly, and yes, I'm sure. Go dress." Oliver waved his free hand at the door.

Geoffrey said, "Thanks," and went, trying to figure out how much of that had been an outright lie and how much might have had something to do with the truth.

"Well?" Ellen said when he came into her room, bottle-green doublet in place, to help her with her stays.

"He said he wouldn't hate me, at least."

Ellen laughed and tugged at her pale chemise. "That's big of him. Not until after the season, at least; I'm sure he doesn't want to deal with your understudy."

"No, and you don't want to kiss him every night instead of me."

"God, no. Give me a hand?"

Geoffrey helped her adjust the wine-dark overdress so that it hung properly and tried to think Romeo thoughts. Kissing Ellen's neck helped with the general mood of urgency, though not so much with the youth. "You're beautiful."

"Oh, shut up, Geoff." Ellen put on the necklace someone in costume had thought was perfect for Juliet and made a face at him in the mirror. "Sorry."

"I'm going to go get a drink. See you when they call places."

"Sorry," she said again as he left.

There wasn't any time left to worry about anything but the play, the lightning-fast infatuation of it all and all of the pieces of blocking that went into making it work. That made everything easier, for a while, because while Romeo's life was stressful, it was predictably stressful. He fell out of love, he fell in love with the wrong girl, he got married on a whim, and he died tragically. There was no nagging guilt, no wondering if he'd gone the wrong way. Everyone knew that he had, and they were all cheering for him anyway.

Upstaging Mercutio was just a side benefit.

Kissing Ellen-as-Juliet, on the other hand, was for the time being his raison d'etre and the most fascinating pastime known to man, and there was no downside to that at all.

The intermission hit Geoffrey in the small of the back and left him leaning on the wall, gasping for breath. "You're doing great," someone said.

Ellen kissed him, taking him by surprise and bringing him back to the present moment. "God, you're amazing," she said, and she had her hand on his hip before he realized where she was going next.

He caught her wrist and said, "Later."

"Watching you makes me realize what a genius I am," Oliver said, and clapped them both on the shoulder. "Keep it up."

"Thank you," Ellen said, and turned enough to kiss Oliver on the cheek. It could have been unremarkable, except that it wasn't.

Geoffrey stared at them and tried to figure out what his line was. Even the principle of agreement left him in the cold.

"Great job, as ever, Geoffrey," Oliver said after a moment's pause, and he went off to deal with some more solvable problem.

"What was that about?" Ellen asked Geoffrey. "I thought you were going to say something."

He shook his head and kissed her lightly. "My focus is off tonight. I have to go hide."

"Take me with you." She took his hand and squeezed it.

"All right."

And it was, right up until the shout of "Five minutes!" when Ellen had to redo her lipstick, and Geoffrey had to scramble for some sort of matte powder for his chin, then borrow her lipstick, which was the wrong color entirely.

The second half went as well as anyone could have wanted it to, and afterward there were any number of people clapping their shoulders. Geoffrey smiled as long as he could, stripped out of his costume with his dressing room light off and the door open a crack so no one would think he was in there, and went out again, looking for parts of himself he'd left behind to give Romeo everything he deserved.

Various remnants of the last twenty-four hours came back, and he wasn't glad to see any of them. It was all going to be a towering mess, one way or the other, and somewhere Ellen was probably looking for him. She would be on her way to the bar any minute now. So would Oliver.

Geoffrey went to Ellen's house instead, where he drank off a full measure of whiskey and took a shower that lasted a full twenty minutes without having to share the hot water, step around someone, or apologize for being quiet. Silence was a welcome change.

It didn't help him make any more sense of the mistakes he'd made, but there was no way he'd end up in the same bind as that morning, not at this rate.

Eventually even the white noise of the shower palled, and he turned it off. That left hours before Ellen would be back if she stayed with her normal pattern. Geoffrey went to bed, trying to think of it as recuperation instead of hiding.

At some dark hour, someone shook his shoulder. "Geoff? Are you all right?"

"Fine," he said automatically. "Just asleep."

"Sorry," Ellen said. "Everyone was wondering where you were."

"Here."

"Right. Sorry."

He didn't manage to sleep again until she was in his arms, a chilly contrast to the warmth of the bed.

*

"You scared me last night," Ellen said over breakfast.

"I didn't mean to. I was tired. And it was a very, very long day." Geoffrey ran his hands through his hair and drank his coffee. "Did you have a good evening out?"

Ellen shrugged. "It was strange without you, really. Especially because things are so off with Oliver, and he didn't do more than say hello when I came in. I wasn't there that long. James and I had a drink, and he told me about how his boyfriend keeps refusing to move to town until he gets a contract for more than a season, as if I care. And then I came home. I should've just come back when you did." She patted his hand. "You could have said you were leaving."

"No, I couldn't have. You would have talked me out of it. 'Just one drink,' you would've said, and I'd have gone with you, and it wouldn't have been." He sighed. "I needed to sleep. And to know where I was going to be when I woke up, and with whom."

"I wouldn't have tried to keep you out until all hours." She frowned. "It's just good to have someone I can talk to. And I really don't know that many people yet. James worked with me in Calgary, of all the Godforsaken places, and Yvette, but she wasn't there." Ellen had a sip of coffee. "Do you think Oliver's angry?"

"I have no idea what he's thinking. Last week, I would've claimed I knew, but your guess is as good as mine now." Geoffrey rested his elbow on the table and his head on his hand. "Which is a hell of a loss. How am I supposed to work with him if I can't read him worth anything? God, I can do Romeo, but the Coward he talked me into directing--I can't do it alone."

"I'm sure it'll just be temporary," Ellen said, and patted his shoulder. "It's not like you did anything wrong. Or he did anything wrong."

"Right, well, that doesn't necessarily mean anything." Geoffrey sighed. "We're supposed to be there at six?"

"Yes." Ellen smiled at him in the late morning sunlight. "This is my favorite part of the run, when everybody thinks they know what they're doing and nobody's bored yet, and no rehearsals for _Private Lives_ until next week. What do you want to do with all this time?"

Last season, Geoffrey would have spent some of these free days indulging in sleep, some of them in reading up for the next play or plays, but most of them in making himself a nuisance around the theater in one way or another. There were days when he'd ended up stapling programs, running to the hardware store for the right fuses to make sure the lighting system stayed together, and taking the hard-working executive staff's minds off of their cruel, dull fates with as much levity as they'd allow him.

But more than all of those days put together, he'd talked with Oliver. They'd discussed, nitpicked, bantered, bickered, and generally demolished every show they'd worked on together. Before this season, before Ellen had moved into her grandmother's old house and become the god of all Geoffrey's idolatry, Oliver had talked him into directing. At the time he'd promised to do it, he'd had nothing but time, but there was nothing like a coup de foudre out of a clear blue sky to fill all his waking moments. He had done a lot of the work that he could do without actual rehearsals, but he was still afraid of the damned thing.

"I don't know," Geoffrey said. "I should work on the Coward, get it all down."

He had it memorized, or nearly so, but he needed someone to disagree with him so that he could defend his opinions. Arguing with Ellen was too dangerous; he didn't know what the difference between chop-logic and fury was with her, yet. Besides that, she didn't know the play as well as he did.

Oliver had wanted him to do a small play, and _Private Lives_ was that, though if he had it to choose again he would've picked something less caustic, now. He'd cast Ellen before he kissed her, when she was still wearing black and looking exhausted every moment she wasn't on the stage. It was harder to think of the play now, of directing her as a louche, loose woman.

She'd do it well, but that wasn't the point.

Ellen set her coffee aside and kissed him. "We could go back upstairs. The play will keep."

"For a while." Geoffrey stood and gave her a hand up. "But nothing too strenuous. That fight with Tybalt is no joke when I'm too tired to stand."

She laughed and kissed him again. "I won't wear you out that much, don't worry."

She was true to her word, but by three-o'clock the idleness of the afternoon was grating at his conscience. "I'm going over to the theater," Geoffrey said, and squeezed her hand.

"Oh, all right." Ellen went to the only bookshelf in the house that had her books on it and pulled out a script. "I'll come and work on memorizing." She grinned at him. "It's going to be a big jump from Juliet to Amanda Prynne."

Geoffrey hugged her tightly, feeling her shake with a surprised laugh. "You'll be wonderful. I know you will. I can see it all already."

"That's sweet." She kissed him and let him go. "Were you going to bring a script, too?"

"I have a copy there, somewhere." It was buried in the drifts of papers in Oliver's office from one of their heated discussions regarding set design. Oliver had proposed something that Geoffrey remembered as ecru on taupe on beige on tan, and Geoffrey had thrown the script at him and missed, shouting something about how the audience would be stupefied with boredom before they even got to the first line. That was back when things were normal.

Oliver glanced up when they walked into his office; he was on the phone and looked bemused. "Next season, then," he said. "When can we get all of this in writing?"

Ellen sat in one of his chairs and took out her script. Geoffrey sighed and stood behind her, reading over her shoulder while Oliver finished whatever it was he was doing.

"Excellent. I'll have the information faxed over by the end of the day." Oliver's enthusiasm sounded strangely brittle. "Yes. No, thank you." He hung up and blew out his breath as if he'd been having an argument. "Well. I hesitate to say good afternoon."

"Why?" Geoffrey asked.

Oliver cleared his throat. "Apparently our main stage production next season will be _Henry IV_, part one." He sounded much less interested in it than he had in the _Hamlet_ he'd suggested before.

Ellen looked up from her script with a wry smile. "That'll be a change from Romeo."

"Quite."

"At the risk of sounding like a two-year-old, why Henry?" Geoffrey asked. Oliver gave him an apologetic look; apparently he wasn't going to admit to having wanted _Hamlet_ to anyone else yet.

"Peter Hawkins wants to play Falstaff for us." Oliver ran a hand through his hair. "Who am I to say no?"

"God." Ellen's smile had turned nostalgic. "I saw his Scottish Play when I was ten. Amazing."

Geoffrey folded his arms over his chest and tried to find the bright side. "That should be interesting."

Oliver gave him a grateful smile. "Interesting? I hope we manage better than that."

"I'm sure we will," Ellen said, and glanced at Geoffrey, then looked at Oliver. "Do you need some time to work on it now?"

Geoffrey cleared his throat. "Actually, I need to talk to you about the incidental music for the Coward," he said, before Oliver could make any more glorious promises that would probably fall through.

"I'll be going," Ellen said, and put her arm around Geoffrey's shoulders on her way to the door in order to kiss him briefly. "Don't forget there's a play tonight."

He laughed. "Of course not. So, music."

"For--yes." Oliver lifted up two different stacks of paper on his desk, found Geoffrey's reissue of Coward, and handed it to him. "What were you thinking?"

"I have no idea." Geoffrey leaned on the desk and opened to the first part. "Maybe the 'A kiss is just a kiss' thing from _Casablanca_?"

"After everything you said about making it modern?" Oliver rolled his eyes. "No."

"Well, I don't know." Geoffrey scowled at the script. "What do people who have more money than love listen to these days?"

Oliver scoffed. "They have more love than they know what to do with."

Geoffrey borrowed a pencil. "My play, my interpretation," and how long had he been waiting to say that to Oliver?

It only made him laugh, anyway. "You need to reread some of your post-modern theory, darling."

"That's not the point. The point is, what's their song?"

Coward covered several hours, right up to the point where Oliver paused in the middle of expostulating about Amanda and her inability to show affection, closed the script, and smiled at him tightly. "It's getting late."

Curtain was in less than an hour, but Geoffrey had the costume and makeup down to a science. "All right," he said, and tucked his script under his arm. "We'll have to figure Sybil out tomorrow."

"What is this 'we'?" Oliver raised his eyebrows. "I have other things to do, you know." Oliver had often said that, but it never came to anything.

"I'll see you at ten, then?"

"Stop it." He slammed his script down on the desk. "What are you doing, Geoffrey?"

Geoffrey looked at the clock again. "Going to change?"

"No." Oliver sighed, his shoulders slumping. "No. With this--inviting me over, asking if I'd hate you if you never fucking kissed me again, and acting like it never happened." He frowned. "It's infuriating. What's the next step?"

"I don't know." There were any number of ways it could go, but it was hard to say which of them were plausible, and harder to figure out which of them was a good idea. "Ellen--"

"She's a convenient excuse." Oliver folded his arms. "Where did this come from?"

"I don't know," Geoffrey said again, and leaned on Oliver's desk. The discussions of the play were easy, however heated they got, but actual arguments made him tired. "If I knew, I'd tell you. If I knew, I'd send it all back. Make everything normal again."

Oliver sighed. "Even if you could do that, and obviously you can't, I don't want you to."

"Don't you?" Geoffrey frowned at him.

Oliver laughed like it hurt and opened the bottom drawer of his desk. He waved a half-empty bottle of scotch at Geoffrey. "Do I want you to go back to being a good little almost-entirely-straight boy who'll spend hours with me, and never once want anything more than a good hard argument? No. For God's sake, I fell in love with you when you were only here on a one-show contract playing Romeo and introducing yourself as Geoff without any fucking irony. And you didn't notice, because you were twenty-three, and I wanted you to stay forever, and there was no way in hell I could've lived with myself if I'd said anything."

"Jesus, Oliver." Geoffrey stared at him. After a revelation like that, there should be shafts of light and angels singing, the fitting of missing pieces of information, shouts of "Eureka," but it was only bewildering. He shook his head, hoping to clear it. None of that speech could be true, or Oliver would've said something. It had been too long, and he wasn't the kind of person who suffered in silence. "Don't."

"Oh, no, you don't get to say that today. Do you have any fucking idea how young twenty-three is? How much I wanted to promise you the whole world at your feet if you'd just stay?"

"You did that." The contract after Romeo had been overly generous; he'd known it then, but he hadn't had any reason to turn it down. They'd loved him and he'd done well. It hadn't been only Oliver. "I had my own apartment. Only one in the young company."

Oliver shook his head and opened the bottle, taking a quick drink before he went on. "It was just money, and you'd made more than enough, packed houses for all of R and J, of all the fucking warhorses to have them swooning in the aisles, begging for tickets. But I wanted to be swooning, and I didn't let myself. You didn't know, did you?"

Geoffrey laughed, half choking on the bitterness of it. "You didn't. God, weren't you fucking Tybalt? I wasn't--"

"Tybalt didn't matter a damn. Why the hell would I lie to you?" Oliver put the bottle down and came around the desk, in his space in ways that wouldn't normally make the hair on Geoffrey's neck stand up, and took him by the shoulders fiercely. "You know this place needs you--the play, the festival, the whole damn town loves you--but I need you more. I did then, enough to talk the board into that piddly apartment, enough to give you better roles than any boy your age ought to have had, if you weren't so fucking amazing."

"Thank you," Geoffrey said, and couldn't meet his eyes, not in the face of all that. He was half certain Oliver was making it up for effect, still. "You--need me?"

"For everything." Oliver's smile was weak. "I need you on my stage, I need you directing your Coward, I need you here, and--" he cut himself off. "I don't need, not need, entirely, your affection. Per se. But it does make life more bearable."

Affection was easy, and it didn't take any thought to say, "Well, I love you, you know that," and mean it. It was easier than saying it to Ellen; there was no commitment in it he hadn't made every time he stepped on the stage.

Oliver sucked in a quick breath and let him go as if Geoffrey had rejected him. "And I love you, whether or not it means a damned thing to you."

"Fuck, Oliver, of course it does." Geoffrey threw up his hands. "Where would I be if you didn't push things through for me? Waiting tables, God forbid? Playing something, somewhere, and not directing, I'm sure. Half of what I am now, if that. And certainly not Romeo, not here, not with Ellen."

"I should have said something years ago," Oliver said, and he sounded like he was on the verge of tears. "I should have, but you were never--it was never the right time. When you were twenty-three--"

Geoffrey snorted. He'd seen the trajectory of enough of what passed for relationships with Oliver to know how they worked. "You would've swept me off my feet for a weekend and dropped me like a rock at the end of it. It would've ruined the whole play, and I would've hated you forever."

"No." Oliver grabbed him by the shoulders again and kissed him, doing an excellent job of conveying ten years' worth of wanting in a single kiss, whether or not the feeling had any basis in fact. "Never."

Geoffrey's knees were shaking, but he knew it was a lie, somewhere underneath. After everything they'd been through, all the arguments and productions, girlfriends and flings that had been temporary, momentary measured against the strength of their friendship, Oliver couldn't have kept it to himself if he'd really felt this way so long. "All right," Geoffrey said, hoping to appease him long enough to get out of the office fully dressed. "Now what?"

Another kiss, and he backed up a step in the middle of it, running into the wall. "You have, what, half an hour before the curtain goes up?" Oliver asked.

"Yes." Geoffrey lost the S in a hiss of breath as Oliver put a hand down his pants. "That's not--I--"

"Oh, please, Geoff." Oliver's voice was more sarcastic than desperate. He had Geoffrey's pants open already, and was kneeling. "As if you wouldn't be doing the same with Ellen if you were out there, pretending to get dressed."

"That's the--" problem, he couldn't say, though he meant to, though he should've. Oliver's mouth on him was like that kiss: there was too much there to ignore or interrupt, too much of anything to do more than lean on the wall and shake. Even if he still doubted the sincerity of it all. "Fuck."

Oliver sighed and caught one of Geoffrey's hands. "Some other time," he promised, his breath hot on Geoffrey's cock.

"Please," Geoffrey said, and bit his lip to hold in a groan. "Oh--fuck."

He was better than a thirty-second blowjob; he'd been better than that for years. But Oliver was holding him there against the wall and going down on him like it was five seconds to curtain, like Geoffrey needed this to live and Oliver needed it to breathe. Orgasm hit like a punch, leaving him gasping, "I'm--going to--" and covering his mouth, too late to muffle all the wordless shout.

Geoffrey leaned on the wall, gasping for breath, and wondered for a few endless moments whether anyone was close enough to the offices to hear anything. It wasn't likely, thirty minutes before the show, and when no one opened the door, he let himself believe that no one was nearby except Oliver, who stood up and brushed his knees off as casually as if they did this every day.

"You'll need to go change," he said, his voice even, if a little hoarse.

"I can't believe you did that," Geoffrey said, leaving aside the vast number of unbelievable things Oliver had said before the incredible blowjob.

Oliver smiled, briefly and smugly. "Can't you?"

Geoffrey fastened his pants with shaking hands. "No. I. I have to tell Ellen."

"Oh, God. Not before the show." Oliver turned away and picked up a bottle from his desk, taking a swig of scotch before he handed it to Geoffrey. "Here. Not too much; we don't want the apprentices to smell it."

"Thanks." Geoffrey took a sip and winced. "I have to tell her, though."

Oliver took the bottle out of his hand. "As your director, I must insist: after the show. Don't ruin both your performances with this--" he waved his hand "--indiscretion."

It was both self-serving on his part and good advice. "All right. I have to go."

"I know." Oliver put his hands on Geoffrey's shoulders and kissed him on the forehead, too close and not close enough. "Take a deep breath; you're shaking."

Geoffrey laughed once. "Are you surprised?"

"I'd be more flattered if you didn't actually have to leave five minutes ago." Oliver patted his shoulders once, as though that sort of nonsexual gesture could make up for everything else, and let him go. "Break a leg, darling."

There was too much to do and too little time to do it in; Geoffrey shoved everything but the play out of his head as best he could and put on the damn show.

*

It was midnight before Geoffrey got Ellen home, and neither of them was entirely sober. "I have to, we have to talk," he said, as soon as they were in the door, and she gave him a look that made him shiver.

"Oh?" Her voice was light, but not calm; she knew as well as he did that nothing good ever started with "we have to talk."

"I, um." Geoffrey ran his hand through his hair and hated himself, hated Oliver, hated the whole mess for having happened. "I love you," he said first, to make sure that she wouldn't forget.

Ellen raised her eyebrows. "What's wrong?"

He couldn't look at her and say it, could barely mumble the words. "I, Oliver, we, kind of had sex."

"Fuck, Geoffrey." Ellen closed her eyes tightly. "What the hell does that even mean? No, don't tell me. God, I should've known it would be something like this. How long have you been--" she made some gesture with her head, pressing her lips together tightly.

"Once. Just once. It was--" He swallowed. "It won't happen again."

She blew out her breath and pushed him away. "You said that before. Jesus, how am I supposed to trust you? You spend hours with him all the time, and what the hell are you doing, anyway?"

"Working on the play," Geoffrey said immediately, and amended, "mostly," when she laughed.

"And you 'love me.'" She made it a quote with the acid in her voice. "Well. What do you want, here? Are you getting off on this confession thing? Are we going to do this all over again tomorrow?"

"No, no, no." The whole thing made him sick, and if he could have gone back and hit himself for being so damn willing he would've. "I don't want to. I can't lose you."

"My God." Ellen turned away from him and walked across the living room, then back. "You're not very good at making me feel wanted, here."

Geoffrey sighed. "I know. I'm sorry. I do, really, more than anything."

"More than Oliver?"

She said the question as if it should hurt, as if he might possibly have trouble answering her. "Yes. Hell yes." Geoffrey offered her his hand. "I don't know what the hell's going on, but it's over if you want it to be."

"Fuck." Ellen hugged him. "I don't know what the hell you want."

"You," he said, and it was true. "You, and this play, and the Coward, and loving you, and working with you until we're both too old to put on our costumes ourselves and somebody has to help us with the wigs so we can sit in the back and be Lord and Lady Extra in a production of one of the histories no one ever does."

"Then what do you want from Oliver?"

Geoffrey sighed and buried his face in her hair, trying to figure out what was going on. "The same things I always have, and that doesn't include sex. Just--I don't know what he wants."

"Fine." Ellen thumped him on the back and let him go. She picked up the phone and started dialing before Geoffrey realized she was even heading in that direction.

"Oh, God," he said, and sat on the couch.

"Hello, it's Ellen, I know it's late, sorry," she said, with the unrepentant tone in her apology that meant she was so angry she could barely see. "What the hell's going on here, Oliver?"

Geoffrey put his head in his hands and tried to imagine what the answer was.

Whatever Oliver said, Ellen sniffed and said, "Well, don't," and then, "Not behind my back, you asshole. That's where I draw the line."

If Oliver wasn't apologizing, he was an idiot. Geoffrey said, "I'm sorry."

Ellen laughed once, sharp and mirthless. "How the hell am I supposed to believe that?"

"It won't happen again," Geoffrey said, half into his hands.

"You certainly practiced your apology together," Ellen said, and sighed. "You know, Sunday night is a good night to get this kind of shit out of your system."

"What?" Geoffrey asked, but she wasn't talking to him.

Ellen was pacing again. "After the show. Here, all three of us. No more hiding things, no more sneaking off, or I swear to God I'll quit and then where will you both be?"

Geoffrey stood up. "Don't."

She gave him a pained smile and said, "It'll be fun. Here's Geoff," and handed him the phone.

"You're either blessed beyond the ken of mortals or cursed to hell," Oliver said after a long pause.

Geoffrey looked at Ellen, who was waiting for him to say something with her hands on her hips. "Blessed, I think." He shifted his grip on the phone. "I have more ideas about _Private Lives_ now. What to do with the physicality of the fight."

"You didn't," Oliver said breathlessly.

"No. But I'm inspired." Geoffrey licked his lips. "So we have a date?"

"Sunday night. And I've solemnly sworn to be on my best behavior until then." Oliver tapped his fingers on the phone. "You're not terribly angry, are you?"

Geoffrey closed his eyes and tried not to imagine Oliver's expression. "This would be much easier if I could just hate you."

Oliver laughed. "I've felt that way about you for a fucking decade, darling. Are we still on for that discussion tomorrow morning?"

"I don't know." Geoffrey looked at Ellen, who was watching him in turn. "Am I allowed to go to work tomorrow, Ellen?"

"Yes, of course. Just--" she rolled her eyes "--keep your fucking pants on this time."

"Yes," Geoffrey said. It sounded like the easiest instruction in the world, but then, it would have sounded easy that morning, too.

"Good. Get some sleep."

"Maybe. Good night." Geoffrey hung up the phone.

Ellen was frowning. "Maybe what?"

"Maybe I'll get some sleep."

"When I'm done with you," she said, and kissed him hard.

 

*

Oliver didn't come straight home with them on Sunday night; he followed half an hour later, keeping something like a facade of decency. It was impossible to make small talk, impossible to do more than wait until Ellen said, "Well, let's do this."

The fact that they'd all ended up in bed before did not make walking up the stairs, knowing that they were going to do it again, any less nerve-wracking. "I should have had a drink," Geoffrey said.

Ellen laughed. "We've got plenty, if you really need something."

He took a deep breath and let it out, trying to believe that whatever happened or didn't happen, they'd all be on speaking terms by morning. "I'm fine."

"Good," Oliver said, and clapped him on the shoulder. "False courage was enough trouble the first time around." Ironic, coming from Oliver, who was about as likely to be sober as he was to be straight.

"Something like that," Geoffrey said, and gave him the best smile he could manage. It didn't feel convincing.

Ellen had put on the light blue sheets that morning and made an effort to throw all of the laundry into the bin, though it was overflowing. "Sorry about the mess," she said.

"You have better things to do than keep house." Oliver held out his hand to her and kissed her when she came close enough.

There was something distressingly tranquil about it; Geoffrey wondered whether he ought to feel jealous, but they weren't convincing enough for that. "I, um," he said, wanting to apologize and call the whole thing off.

"Sorry, Geoff." Ellen smiled at him briefly, as if she expected him to be fulminating with possessive rage by then, and kissed him instead.

He had a nearly Pavlovian reaction to kissing Ellen by this point, particularly when it went on long enough. Stroking her hair and pulling her closer made the ridiculous proposition of the evening seem more tolerable for a moment, as if it would all be all right because it was beginning somewhere so normal.

Then Oliver put an arm around his shoulders. "It's a good thing you don't let yourselves get this involved when you're in character," he said in Geoffrey's ear. "Those breeches wouldn't hide a damned thing."

It was only fair to break off the kiss with Ellen with one more light, closed-mouthed peck, and turn to Oliver. Kissing him before had been an experiment, even the tenth time; now it was more of a commitment, with Ellen bearing witness. Oliver sighed and relaxed into it; it was apparently as much of a relief to him as it was to Geoffrey that it still felt good, that they hadn't made some sort of miscalculation.

Taking off each other's clothes was a clumsy process, interrupted by kisses and made harder, not easier, by six hands doing the work. Geoffrey felt guilty every time he kissed one of them and interrupted them in taking something off; it was reassuring to kiss them and not reassuring at all to make the prospect of whatever they were going to do more immediate and real.

There was no reason it should feel particularly uncomfortable to be naked in front of Oliver, since it wasn't the first time and God knew he'd wandered through dressing rooms enough times without knocking. He looked alternately discomfited and amused, too, and said, "I like the lamp in here."

"Do you want it off?" Ellen asked, reaching for it.

Geoffrey's immediate response was "Yes," but he didn't say it. That would make all kinds of things more difficult, and as far as he knew none of them were used to maneuvering around two other people in bed.

"No, it's fine," Oliver said, and got under the covers as though he was embarrassed.

Ellen raised her eyebrows at Geoffrey, who got the message several seconds later than he normally might, and lay down, leaving space for her on his other side. "Hi," he said to Oliver.

I'm not going to ask whether you come here often, darling. If the answer is no, that would be too depressing." Oliver kissed him again before he could say anything. It hurt to hear him tease, but it felt more true than some declaration of love would have.

Ellen laughed. "God, that's a bad joke."

"Horrible," Geoffrey agreed, and lifted himself up on his elbows. There were any number of things they could do next, and he didn't know what, if any, were going to go well.

"You should--" Ellen said.

Oliver picked up her cue, whatever it was. "Ah. Yes."

Geoffrey blinked at them, trying to quell the flicker of panic their unspoken communication made him feel. "You're conspiring against me."

"For you," Ellen corrected him, and turned away, rummaging in the drawer. "There are more productive things to spend hours discussing than Noel Coward, you know."

Geoffrey laughed and told himself that it was going to be all right. "Such as what?"

Oliver cleared his throat. "Such as exactly what we ought to be doing, here."

"You got a head start," Ellen said, turning back to them with lubricant in her hand. She handed it to Oliver with a crooked smile. "It was only fair, wasn't it, to have a little chat?"

"Just a chat?" Geoffrey asked.

Ellen kissed him and gave him a smug smile. "Yes. That time."

It didn't reassure him. "What did you say?"

Oliver smirked. "Some extremely flattering things about your ass, and what you might like done to it."

Geoffrey felt his face heat and hoped that the light was low enough to hide his blush. "Oh. God."

"Sorry, I wasn't lying," Ellen said defensively. "And really, it's for your fucking benefit."

"I know, I--I know."

Ellen kissed him, nibbling at his lower lip, and he tried to stop himself from shaking. "Keep breathing," she said, and laughed when he grimaced at her. "Come on, Geoff, you don't have to pretend to be innocent here. I know what you've been getting up to in that office of his."

The reminder made him blush in earnest and kiss her to stop her from accusing him of worse things than he'd done, whatever those were. "Don't."

"Don't what?" Oliver put a hand on his hip.

"I--" Geoffrey shook his head. "I can't apologize any more for making that mistake."

"You don't have to." Ellen squeezed his shoulder. "Just--enjoy this. And don't hide it."

He took a deep breath, let it out, and kissed her again. "Ellen wasn't exaggerating in her claims, I'm sure."

Oliver laughed. "You have a giant orange dildo under the bed? Really, darling?"

She giggled and let Geoffrey go to wave a hand at him, dismissing this. "We would if he was a little more comfortable with himself."

"God." Geoffrey groaned and moved onto his knees to kiss her again. "I'm not that inhibited."

Oliver put one cold-slick finger on his tailbone. "No? Prove it."

"You don't have to dare me. Just--do it."

He'd never talked about this seriously with Oliver--the only thing, maybe, that never came up in how many fucking discussions--and the way Oliver's fingers felt, careful enough that Geoffrey thought he might be shy, was making it hard to kiss Ellen.

"It's okay," he said, and meant it. "You're not going to break me." Though he'd forgotten how that felt, the push of a fingertip inside him when he wanted it and wasn't so high on sex it was all a part of the blur. "Fuck, yes."

"God, Geoff," Oliver said, and kissed his neck.

Ellen hummed and rubbed his nipple, teasing. "It hasn't been that long, anyway."

"Right, just--" Geoffrey shivered and spread his palms against the mattress, trying to stay on his knees without falling over into her arms or back onto Oliver. His brain was melting out his ears, and he was doing a terrible job of pretending it wasn't. "I--God."

"Do you need me to slow down?" Oliver asked, for once not condescending, for once actually trying to be polite about rushing him. He sounded like he'd chainsmoked an entire pack of cigarettes.

Geoffrey laughed. "No, maybe--no." Ellen kissed him again, put her hand on his shoulder, and that grounded him. Maybe Oliver wasn't going to be himself, but if Ellen was, that helped.

"Maybe?" Oliver asked in his ear, and he ran his free hand down Geoffrey's back. "You--" and whatever he wanted to say, he bit it off.

"I'm all right," Geoffrey said and pushed back against his hand. "Really, just--keep going."

Ellen patted his cheek. "It usually takes two fingers before he starts making desperate noises," she said, as if Geoffrey wasn't there and wasn't blushing at her words.

"I don't," he protested.

"Don't you?" Oliver nibbled his ear and took Ellen's advice, cautious and implacable at once.

"Fuck," Geoffrey said, and wished he could say something more coherent. The words that usually served him well were gone. "Oh--fuck."

Ellen kissed him again. "Better," she said, as if she were the one giving notes this time through. "You're all pink." She traced a line across his chest with her tongue and it felt hotter than it should, then colder.

"Can't breathe," Geoffrey said, and she laughed and licked his nipple, giving him another excuse to groan.

"Am I hurting you?" Oliver asked, his voice still rough but his tone urgent.

"Not at all." Geoffrey reached back and patted his thigh, strangely familiar for all that they didn't do this. "I--it's--don't stop."

The next thrust, less tentative, made him shout, and Ellen looked up with a grin. "You don't make desperate noises?"

He would've protested, would've said that there was nothing but hope in that particular noise, but all he could do was laugh and make it again. "Fuck."

"You'll let me know, won't you, when that goes from being your entire vocabulary to an actual request?" Oliver's hand on his hip was shaking slightly; so was his voice.

"Soon," Geoffrey said, and covered Oliver's hand with his own. "Soon, I--nn--"

"You're going to kill me," Oliver said, and squeezed his hip. "I keep wanting to tell you we could do this all night, but I couldn't stand it."

Ellen said, "And I'm sorry, but I couldn't let you." She stroked Geoffrey's cock, teasingly light so that by the time he pushed against her hand, she'd moved it.

"I, please--" Geoffrey bit his lip. "Don't, unless you really want me to come. Already."

"God, no." Ellen put her hands on his shoulders, deceptively innocent. "Not yet. I want you inside me first."

"Oh, fuck, Ellen." Geoffrey kissed her, leaned into her and made another lost, embarrassing noise in her ear when Oliver twisted his fingers. "It'll be a mess. All of it."

"My God." Oliver laughed, stilling his fingers. "Are you turning down a challenge?"  
Geoffrey took a shuddering breath, then another. "It won't be, it won't be smooth. Or easy. Or pretty, probably."

Oliver kissed the back of Geoffrey's neck. "Are you in this for perfection, Geoff?"

He'd asked that question before, usually when he'd argued himself as hoarse as he was now, and it was almost always enough to make Geoffrey back down from whatever point he'd been insisting upon. "No," he said. "Not really."

"Then what's the problem?"

Geoffrey shook his head. "That the first time we do all of this, the first time I'm actually going to remember--fuck--any of this, you want everything."

Ellen smiled. "I'm not surprised. I knew what I was getting myself into when I came to the Festival." She seemed to hear what she'd said before Geoffrey had enough breath to laugh at it. "Oh, God, not bed, not this, I meant perfectionism. I meant--" She ran her thumb over Geoffrey's lower lip. "Giving it your all, enough that you get a reputation for it."

"I, God." Geoffrey sighed and gave her a weak smile. "'My all' has never been so demanded before."

"Not when you were listening, maybe," Oliver said, and twisted his fingers again.

"Jesus." Geoffrey put a hand on Ellen's shoulder and fought to breathe. "All right, yes, I--we can make this work. Somehow."

Ellen kissed him and patted his hand. "Sorry, I need to get up for a second and find the other box of condoms." She got off the bed.

"The other box?" Oliver squeezed Geoffrey's thigh. "I knew it was a good casting decision, putting you opposite each other."

"For fuck's sake, that's--" Geoffrey shook his head. "You didn't have anything to do with this part. Before now, anyway."

Oliver hummed. "I know, darling. I'm not taking the credit for your charm."

"Don't try claiming mine, either," Ellen said. She was standing hipshot by the bed, giving them both a sardonic look. The curve of her hips made him want to touch her, to cup her breasts in his hands and bury himself in her, if only he had enough balance and breath. "Here," she said, and handed them condoms.

Geoffrey stared at the one in his hand as if the introduction of a tiny piece of latex was going to make what they were doing more real. He came close to dropping it when Oliver let him go, saying, "Sorry, I need to concentrate. And two hands."

"I, God, it's all right." Geoffrey gave Ellen what he hoped was a charming smile and handed it back. "I'll put the fucking thing on upside down and inside out at this rate."

"You're better than that," she said, but she was smiling as she tore it open.

"I don't think you'd be doing any better than I am in this situation." Enunciating every syllable made him feel like he was drunk, and like if he didn't fight for diction he would devolve into whimpering for more and mercy. "Though I suppose, at some point soon, we could find out."

Ellen raised her eyebrows, smiling as she rolled the condom down on him, her hands sure. "We could."

Geoffrey closed his eyes against the mental image; it was too much in conjunction with the present reality. Much though he trusted both Ellen and Oliver, he trusted that they were going to be pushy, competitive, and demanding. Letting himself think about possibilities would be to his distinct disadvantage. "Maybe not for a few days, anyway."

"You have to get some sleep sometime, don't you?" Oliver asked.

"Theoretically," Geoffrey admitted. "Unless you want Romeo to end up like that _Twelfth Night_, when Beth had insomnia and practically fell over on Orsino at the end."

Oliver chuckled and embraced him from behind for a moment, pressing hard and slick against his ass before he let go. "I don't know about you children, but this may well be the pinnacle of my week. Don't tell anyone; they'd like to think directing a successful play is enough for anyone."

"Sometimes, maybe," Geoffrey said, and Ellen kissed him.

"How should we do this?" she asked.

Geoffrey blinked at her. "I have no idea. I've never done this before."

"Geoffrey," Oliver said sharply.

Geoffrey turned and gave him an apologetic smile. "No, not that part, the whole--" he waved a hand "--threesome thing. God, I never had much respect for skin flicks before, but it's more complicated than it sounds, isn't it?"

"Let's start with the moderately unfamiliar and go toward what you can do in your sleep, shall we?" Oliver said, and touched Geoffrey's hip, pulling him backward more by suggestion than force.

The strangest part about it wasn't the physical sensation--that was more than moderately familiar, though this was no time to explain that--but the way Oliver sighed in his ear and kept one hand on his hip, stroking him as though the repetitious motion would be soothing. As if Geoffrey needed to be gentled to the way it felt to be spread open, filled, so slowly he was shaking with the effort of not demanding more. "I'm all right," Geoffrey said, when he wasn't too focused on feeling to think in words. "You're--it's--don't go too fast, is all."

"God, Geoffrey." Ellen spread her legs with her usual grace and straddled his thighs. "You should see yourself."

"Oh, fuck," Oliver said, and laughed once, harshly. "If you--ah--were the kind of girl with mirrors on the ceiling, I wouldn't be here. Unflattering as hell."

Geoffrey licked his lips. "Kiss me," he said to Ellen, and she did, sucking at his tongue.

"How long are you going to make me watch?" she asked, breaking off the kiss and putting her hand between her legs to rub herself. "You've left me out enough already."

Geoffrey loved watching her give herself orgasms, but she was narrowing her eyes at him and daring him with it this time. "Not--long. Just, God--" he shivered and pushed back against Oliver, who gasped and put an arm around his chest, hanging on tightly.

"You said slowly."

"Ellen is impatient," Geoffrey said; there was no way Oliver could have missed that she wasn't the only one. "Can we--oh--" A slight shift of angle, and he reached blindly for Ellen. "That's, fuck, yes."

"You're both going to squash me if you're not careful." Ellen took his hand and squeezed it lightly. "Lie down."

"I--" Geoffrey covered Oliver's hand on his chest with his own and held on for a long moment. "She has a point."

Oliver sighed and let him go, pulling out so slowly it made Geoffrey shake all over again. "Maybe I should be making her direct something."

"Hell no," Ellen said. "I would be terrible at it. Just--Geoff, grab the pillow, and--"

It was easier to follow her directions than to do anything else, especially when they meant that she was in his arms a moment later, kissing him and wrapping one leg around his waist. That was the easy part, the sweetly familiar part, and the way she felt around him was as addictive and perfect as ever.

Oliver's hand on his ass was stranger, still, even after everything they'd been doing. "Are you comfortable?" he asked, making it a euphemism for so many things that it was impossible to say exactly what he'd meant to begin with.

Geoffrey leaned back into his arms, reaching for his hand to make it more of an embrace for a moment. He didn't have patience for more than that. "Yes. God--" he laughed. "You're going to be lucky if I can get out of bed, you know."

"Only one show tomorrow," Ellen said, and kissed him lightly. "We'll be fine."

Oliver found the right angle and pushed into Geoffrey again, as Ellen was arching onto him. "Speak for yourselves," he said in Geoffrey's ear. "God, you feel amazing."

Geoffrey tried to say, "You, too," but it came out as only a noise strangled between them. There was too much to think about, too much to do, and every way they moved they made him need more of it. "Please--"

"What?" Ellen took his hand and licked two of his fingers, the roughness of her tongue in counterpoint to the way she rocked her hips. "Please, what?"

"Everything." Geoffrey pulled his hand away and reached between them, lost track of what he was doing as Oliver groaned in his ear and thrust harder, right there. "Everything," Geoffrey said again when he realized his hand was on his stomach, doing no one any good. It took more thought than normal to move it down, to find Ellen's clit and give her what she needed. "Fuck."

She moaned as he stroked her, trying to find the friction she needed, more than the way he moved in her, because she needed to and because Oliver was pushing him into her, faster now. "Jesus, Geoff. Just like that--" and she clutched at his shoulders as she came, grinding against him until it hurt in the best way.

"Oh, God, Ellen." Feeling her shake tore him apart, left him helpless and clinging to her as he came, surrounded and full and breathless, caught between them and so dizzy with all of it that he barely knew who he was or what he was doing, except that he was who they wanted and giving them everything he could.

The hot dampness on his neck was Oliver's mouth, kissing him, holding him for another few, ragged strokes before he groaned and came, breathing something nonsensical into Geoffrey's shoulder.

"That--I." Geoffrey laughed at himself and kissed Ellen, lingering as long as he could before he had to get a breath of air and a tiny bit of space. "I think I could have said something brilliant about this once. Before it started."

"You'll think of it later." Oliver ran a hand down his side and pulled out--definitely part of the process Geoffrey hadn't missed--and said, "You're all right, then?"

"Apart from the irreparable damage to my brain? Yes."

"We're all right, then?" Ellen asked, and she looked from him to Oliver.

Oliver smiled. "I hope so."

*

_Romeo and Juliet_ was as good as they could make it, every meteoric night.

_Private Lives_ took as long to rehearse as it did to perform, three weeks on either side of previews with Ellen laughing at first about what a fall from grace it was to go from an ingénue to Amanda, bitter divorcée reuniting with a lover she might not really love.

She was as much a part of the direction as Geoffrey was, in the end; they took their arguments to Oliver's office and bickered until someone came up with some kind of solution that worked. It was easier, as they proved, than taking things back to Ellen's wide bed and trying to resolve things there.

It was an uneven, lurching sort of affair from the start. There were excellent moments--especially when they got past the talking, past the arguing, past needing their egos on the line, and managed to enjoy each other--and there were moments when Geoffrey couldn't stand the sight of either of them. Too many hours in a row, too many rows in a row, and the only thing for it was to hand Oliver a bottle of something viciously alcoholic, get an arm around Ellen's waist, and haul them off to bed.

It wasn't as often as he might have liked, and the first time set something of a pattern for the rest: considering Oliver's tastes, Geoffrey was less than surprised that he ended up in the middle nearly all the time. Even the best sex wasn't as entirely restful as it should have been.

When the Coward closed and Ellen kissed Geoffrey at the end of season party, saying, "God, I can finally smile again," he knew what she meant.

Two weeks after that, he sneaked off to the theater before Ellen was awake and settled near the offices with one of the copies of _Henry IV_ Oliver had lying around, listening to the blessed quiet of Anna doing paperwork uninterrupted and someone down the hall dealing with something about money. If he didn't know the place better, he would've called it normal.

If he hadn't known himself better, he would've called the tranquility he was feeling normal, too, but the way he jumped when Oliver put a hand on his shoulder belied that. "Good morning, Geoff," Oliver said, keeping his voice down.

"Morning," Geoffrey echoed, and got up. His hand brushed Oliver's.

They hadn't fallen into bed since the season ended, and the silence was getting oppressive. Not the silence in the bedroom--Lord knew Ellen was more than enough to break that--but the rest of it. "My chair's more comfortable than that," Oliver offered, and ushered Geoffrey into his office, smiling briefly at Anna as he went by.

"I've got the speeches cold," Geoffrey said, waving his script as an excuse for innocent conversation. "All of them."

"You've been studying hard." Oliver smiled, though it didn't reach his eyes, and sat behind his desk. "Mind if I check my messages?"

Geoffrey settled into a chair and opened his script again. "Whatever you need to do."

Anna came into the office, looking distraught, before Oliver finished his messages. "Oh God," she said, "Peter Hawkins had a heart attack."

"Oh," Oliver said, and set the phone down. "Is he all right?"

Anna shook her head. "No. They said it was over very fast."

Geoffrey let out a breath he hadn't been entirely aware of holding; _Henry IV_ would be paler without him as Falstaff. "Ah."

Oliver said nothing for a few moments, then nodded. "Thank you, Anna." He reached for a tissue, then looked up and offered her the box. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, I--" she smiled, and it looked fragile. "I didn't know him well. Are you going to be okay?"

"Don't worry about me." Oliver waved this off. "I'll--" he swallowed midsentence, and his voice cleared somewhat. "I'll send a card, later."

Anna nodded and hesitated in the doorway for another silent moment. "Everything can wait until tomorrow, really. And the memorial's going to be Friday."

Oliver winced. "Someone will have to cover for me at the board meeting, then."

"It shouldn't be a problem." Anna stayed for another beat. "You're sure you're all right?"

"All right enough to sit here? Yes." Oliver put on a sickly smile. "Go on, you have more pressing things to do than I do, I'm sure."

"Call me if you need anything," Anna said, and went out, closing the door quietly behind her.

The silence came back in her wake and stayed. Oliver stared at the wall for a while, and Geoffrey waited, thinking over the lines he'd been practicing in lieu of being patient.

It was a while before Oliver said, "We worked together for three years, out in Saskatoon of all places."

"Oh?" Geoffrey said, more out of the knowledge that it was the sort of conversation one was supposed to encourage at this point than anything else.

"He drank like a fish--could have played Falstaff even then. But his voice, God--" Oliver shook his head. "The whole theater rang with his Prospero."

"What else did you do?"

"I have no idea. No, wait." Oliver put his head in his hands. "Something Greek, every year--couldn't have gotten away with anything more modern than Canada, not in that town. But we could get away with dressing boys in sheets, so we did. And Wilde, once." He smiled, still looking at the wall but not seeing it. "_Lady Windermere's Fan_, not my suggestion, and I have no idea how they convinced the executive director it was a good plan." He sighed and gave Geoffrey a sidelong look. "And _Hamlet_."

Geoffrey was extremely good at reacting appropriately to cues, but he couldn't read this one. "Oh?"

Oliver sighed and slumped back in his chair. "We could still pull it off, you know. Now that we don't have any obligation to Peter."

The suggestion was enough to make Geoffrey sit up straighter. "It's up to you," he said, and knew he'd failed at keeping his tone level when Oliver smiled wryly at him.

"I'll talk to the board--shit. No, I won't." Oliver sorted through a stack of papers until he found a notepad. "You, you will talk to the board, because I'll be at the memorial during their next meeting. And you'll say--" he pulled out a pen.

"I'll say you sent me." Geoffrey ran his hand through his hair.

"And we'll have the proposal typed up prettily by then. But you'll say, 'I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth.'" Oliver made a note.

Geoffrey winced. "I'm not auditioning for them."

"Aren't you?" Oliver gave him a look. "I could explain to them in twenty pages exactly why they ought to scrap the mostly-developed _Henry IV_ and do the _Hamlet_ I might possibly have been planning on what passes for my own time around here. Or you could explain it to them in a few lines. Borrow some of Peter's presence while you're at it and boom at them. That will wake them up."

"God." Geoffrey put his head in his hands, though the image was compelling. "You're going to have it all done appropriately, right? I don't want to stride in there, deliver a monologue, and have them all boggle because they weren't expecting me."

"Of course we'll warn them." Oliver smiled faintly. "Not of exactly what's coming--it wouldn't do to spoil the surprise--but of your purpose there, certainly. You'll make the argument better than I would, anyway."

"Maybe."

"Maybe!" Oliver leaned over the desk and poked Geoffrey with the pen in his hand. "I could use something life-affirming. Speak the speech."

Geoffrey sat up, took a proper breath, and said it, starting softly where Oliver had begun quoting, and letting it build through "the earth seems to me a sterile promontory" and falling off again at "What a piece of work is man!" to see how Oliver would react. He was frowning, but more as if he was thinking about the speech he'd surely heard hundreds of times than as though he was about to interrupt.

"Man delights not me: no, nor woman neither," Geoffrey said, and ended there, for Oliver was hardly smiling at the words.

"Thank God that's a lie, anyway," Oliver said mildly, then shook his head. "You'll tell the board that, and they'll give us all the money we could need for it. And what the hell, we'll put Peter's name on the program. In Memoriam."

"All right, I'll go."

"Good." Oliver sighed. "Thank you. Jesus, Geoffrey, you're amazing."

He knew better than to discount the value of a compliment, even one meant to pay him off for attending a board meeting. "On good days. Should I go?"

"No, it's--" Oliver shrugged. "I'm fine. Besides, there's work to do." He clapped his hands. "A whole production to plan. If I didn't have notes already, I'd be panicking."

*

The board said yes.

Oliver's notes were nowhere near complete enough to keep him from panicking.

"He drafted you as an unpaid assistant director," Ellen said to Geoffrey, weeks later, when they were having an actual sit-down meal together for the first time Geoffrey could recall, rather than snagging sandwiches or barely seeing one another. "And he didn't even ask if you wanted to."

Geoffrey hadn't put it in so many words, but he knew he'd been doing enough work to qualify for the job. Getting paid for it would have been beyond all expectations; he hadn't been auditioning for the board as a director. The Coward had gone well, but not well enough for them to turn around and give him even nominal auxiliary control of _Hamlet_. "Of course I want to; someone has to, and it's _Hamlet_, for God's sake." Geoffrey finished his food, whatever it was, and stood. "And there's the grave scene still to block, and the effects."

Ellen sighed and caught his hand, kissing the back of his knuckles. "I miss you."

Geoffrey patted her shoulder and looked at the clock. It was dinnertime, or something like it, and he needed to get back to work. "I'll see you later."

"You'll come in after I'm asleep," she accused him. "And you might wake me up, or not. When was the last time you woke me up?"

"I didn't mean to." Ellen had been half-awake when he came in falling-down tired, and when he'd gone to put his arm around her she'd woken up and made love to him, sweet and drowsy. It had been wonderful, in a hazy sort of way.

Ellen squeezed his hand. "Don't apologize for that; it was wonderful. I want you around, that's all."

"I'm right here." Geoffrey patted her hand and pried his fingers free. "But I should get back."

She stood up, going from sweet to furious in a blink. "Just how often do you fuck him? I'm sorry, Geoffrey, but this is ridiculous. I don't see you, I barely talk to you, and you're off with Oliver all the fucking time."

Geoffrey stared at her for a second, then laughed. "When do you think we have time to do anything but work? God, it's been--" he shook his head "--I don't even know, when was it? Never without you."

"Oh, God." Ellen studied his face as if she thought he was lying and they were having vast orgies without her. As if _Hamlet_ would make itself comprehensible to the audience without more work than they had time to do. "Really?"

"Ever since the switchover to _Hamlet_, it's been exhausting. Obviously." He spread his hands and looked at the clock again. Ellen knew as well as anyone how much he wasn't sleeping. "Even if we had time, which we don't, we haven't got energy."

"Good." Ellen kissed him possessively, one hand in his hair, until he regretted sorely that he had to leave. "I can deal with barely seeing you, but only if that keeps being true. All right?"

"It was good, though," Geoffrey said, and Ellen raised her eyebrows.

"There were some spectacular moments, yes."

Geoffrey thought of her face when she was sated and happy and smiled. "We're all out of the habit, aren't we? Maybe if we gave it another shot, you'd feel better about the whole thing."

Ellen leaned against him, relaxing slightly. "Maybe. I miss making love with you when you're actually awake."

"I know, I know. I'm sorry." Geoffrey kissed her gently, then let her go. "I have to get back to work, but I'll talk to Oliver about it."

She sighed. "Fine. If you start working up to it now, Saturday, maybe?"

"I'll ask."

*

Saturday was a dreary day, and it was just as well they'd promised each other that they wouldn't be getting out of bed for very long. The weather made it hard to leave the warmth of the bed even for the length of time it took to have something like breakfast and answer Oliver's knock on the door.

"Lovely weather we're having, isn't it?" he said as he shook out his yellow umbrella.

"Leave that on the mat." Geoffrey waited until he'd hung up his raincoat and kissed him, trying to let go of all the frustrations of the last month and make this worthwhile for both of them. It was difficult to be in the same place as Oliver and not think of the play, and increasingly difficult to think of the play from outside of it, even with Oliver's cold hand on his cheek and warm breath against his lips, close in ways Hamlet wasn't close to anyone.

Oliver asked, "Ellen's upstairs?"

"Yes. Working on the scene with Polonius--or she was until you got here."

"God, we'd better interrupt her, then. Is that what you call foreplay?" Oliver squeezed Geoffrey's shoulder and started for the stairs.

Geoffrey laughed. "Of course not, but we've put in enough hours on the scenes we have together that we'll be more than ready when rehearsals finally start."

"Teaching each other bad habits and reinforcing your own interpretations, I'm sure." Oliver sounded both offended and amused. "Good, ah, afternoon, Ellen," he called once he reached the landing.

"Hello, Oliver," she called back, and came into the hall in her dressing gown.

In the gray light from the bedroom, she was washed-out but still beautiful. Oliver, similarly drab in a green shirt and khakis, kissed her lightly by way of greeting and said, "Have you really been working on Polonius all morning?"

"You know how Geoffrey is," she said, and they went into the bedroom. "He knows as well as you do that I'll have the whole thing memorized by the first day--that I already know it, for God's sake--but that's not enough. I have to hear about the latest and greatest thing you've come up with, and then I have to try it. It's exhausting."

"And you love it," Geoffrey said, and closed the bedroom door behind himself.

Ellen smiled at him over Oliver's shoulder and offered him her hand. "Of course I do."

Geoffrey kissed her knuckles and Oliver chuckled. "Thank you for that, darling. Now I feel less as though I'm in some sort of twisted skin flick for people who like ugly old men and more like I'm surrounded by eccentrics."

"What?" Geoffrey let Ellen's hand go and frowned at Oliver. The cloudy light didn't do him any favors, that was true, but he'd never been ugly, and he wasn't particularly old. "You're not, you know."

"In a skin flick?" Oliver glanced around the room as if he was looking for cameras. "Good."

"No." Geoffrey rolled his eyes and kissed Oliver again, starting with exasperation and moving on to something more like comfort. "You're perfectly fine, and you're not that damned old."

"Mm," Oliver said, as though he want to argue the point but didn't want to waste the energy.

Ellen cleared her throat. "Take my mind off Polonius, would you?"

"We may be able to manage that." Oliver gave Geoffrey a wry look. "I'm not a wretched, rash, intruding fool, if I'm to believe you."

"Not at all," Geoffrey said. "Would you mind if I turned on the light? It feels like it's about to start raining in here."

Ellen said, "Whatever you want," and embraced Oliver.

After a moment, Oliver said, "It's fine."

It was better with the warmer light: they looked more awake, more alive in each other's arms. Geoffrey took off his shirt while they were kissing, which proved to be a mistake. The room only looked warmer, but it was actually too cold to stand there half-naked by himself. He put an arm around each of them to compensate.

"You're in a hurry," Ellen said and ran her hand down his back, turning to kiss him.

He lost himself in the feel of her mouth for a while, though not so much that he forgot what she'd said. She was languid, less urgent than her wont. "I'm used to your normal speed. Are you feeling especially patient today?"

"It's this weather," she said, and gave him an apologetic look. "If we hadn't set it up in advance--and I know what it means for you to take a break for a day, really, Oliver, I'm sorry--I would've called this off today."

Oliver hesitated with one hand on Geoffrey's lower back. "If I go, I'm going to work, you know. And it would be most efficient if you came with me, Geoffrey."

The pun was tantalizing, but Ellen's discomfort took precedence. "It's up to you," he told her. "I can get dressed; we can put this all off for another time."

"No, it's fine," she said, and smiled, but there was something false in it. "I'd rather have you here for the day, whatever you're doing, than let you run off without me again."

"If you're sure," Geoffrey said.

"I'll probably feel better soon, with the right encouragement," she said, and squeezed his ass fondly.

Oliver gave her a tight smile. "What would that consist of, do you think?"

"Oh, I don't know." Ellen shrugged and let them go. "It's nice to be in the audience every once in a while, and I'll say something if I figure out what I want. How's that?"

Geoffrey winced; she'd been uncomfortable enough with the idea of doing this again that he hated to have her excluded, but if she wasn't going so far as to ask them to stop, he hated to waste a rare vacation day with arguing. "As long as you do say something."

She laughed. "How often do I keep my opinion to myself? Don't worry."

"She has a point," Oliver said, smiling crookedly, and Geoffrey kissed him.

It was still unfamiliar enough that they could surprise each other, with the extra buzz of all the days they hadn't had energy for this recently. There were too many nights when Oliver would make some bawdy joke on the level of "That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs," some time after midnight. That would be enough to remind Geoffrey that it was time to leave off working for a few hours and get some sleep because he didn't have the energy to respond in kind. They could at least try to make up for it now, without the fits and starts of innuendo.

Geoffrey was shivering by the time they were both naked and under the covers, with Ellen warm against his back and Oliver's arm around his waist, holding him tight and kissing him as though that was going to be enough. "What do you want?" Geoffrey asked, hoping one of them had an answer. He had too many to choose one, but if they needed the pattern they'd had before to be comfortable, he didn't want to disrupt it.

"Ellen?" Oliver asked after a moment's pause.

"Oh, I don't care one way or the other," she said, though there was something under the blitheness of her tone that made Geoffrey turn onto his back to look at her.

"You're sure," he said.

Ellen touched his mouth with her fingertips. "Ask me that again and I'll distract you."

"Distract me how? I thought we were in this together."

She smiled tightly. "You're having such a good time it seems a shame to interrupt you."

"You're not interrupting anything," Oliver said, and shifted slightly. "Besides which, if you don't get what you want, what's the point of all of this?"

She sighed and gave Geoffrey another not-quite-right smile. "If I could tear you away from each other for five minutes, I've been thinking extremely detailed things about your tongue and what you're so good at doing with it."

"I can do that," Geoffrey said, then amended it to, "I'd love to, if that's what you want."

"Please," she said, and Geoffrey patted Oliver's hand once and disentangled himself, moving onto his knees to give her anything she asked for.

It was easy in ways that even the headiest kiss with Oliver wasn't. The softness of her breasts and the way her nipples hardened under his tongue, the way she gasped and moved underneath him--it all made sense, and he could guess what was coming next well enough to do what she needed.

"You know, that's not the only thing that 'My head upon your lap' means," Oliver said when Ellen gasped and tangled her fingers in Geoffrey's hair, holding his mouth against the wet, sweet heat of her, as if he wanted to pull away.

"Mm, it's my, my favorite interpretation," Ellen said, and sat up a little. There was the damp noise of involved kissing, and her breath hitched as Geoffrey flicked his tongue against her, once, then again. "Do you really--oh, God, Geoffrey--want to argue this now?"

Oliver laughed softly. "Do you?"

"I can't--" Ellen groaned and shook, tugging at Geoffrey's hair. "Not now, just--kiss me."

She tensed, some kisses later, and came with a muffled cry. "God, yes," she said, gasping for breath. "Don't stop--not yet--"

After another two orgasms, the last drawn out enough that Geoffrey wondered exactly how long he could hold his breath before she finally let him go, Ellen sighed a deep and satisfied sigh and relaxed. "You're ridiculously good at that, you know," she said, and tugged on his forearm. "Kiss me again?"

She was flushed and gorgeous, and if they'd been alone, he would have asked if she wanted more. It was enough for the moment to kiss her, to watch her lazy smile and know that whatever else happened, she wanted him and he could give her this whenever she asked.

Oliver put his hand on Geoffrey's shoulder. "You're going to give her that look, aren't you?"

"Which look?"

Ellen touched his cheek. "The one that says, 'I know how to make you scream.' It's an excellent expression."

"And if this is your subtext for that scene, I think you've got it well in hand."

"And what do you want?" Geoffrey asked Oliver.

He shook his head and looked away from Geoffrey. "I should ask you, shouldn't I?"

"Oh, for God's sake." Ellen rolled her eyes at them. "If you're going to defer to each other all day you may as well lie around and hug."

Oliver smiled and sat up. "That would be a solution, though not necessarily the best one. But, on the whole, I think I'd prefer it if you fucked me."

Geoffrey laughed and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. He didn't know whether part of him had been expecting the request or hoping for it; either way, it was workable. "So you do know what you want, then. Why am I not surprised?"

"Of course I know." Oliver caught his hand and kissed his palm, then the tips of his fingers. "I'm moderately well-known in my field for being very clear on what I want people to do, not least you. Are you going to object?"

"No, that's--that's fine." Geoffrey caught his breath at the touch of Oliver's tongue on his thumb. "There's, we have lube somewhere or other, where did it go?"

Ellen got out of bed and rummaged in the bedstand, naked and lithe. "Here," she said, and came back with the tube and a condom.

Geoffrey took as deep of a breath as he could and let it out, though he couldn't keep it smooth. "We should, I--hmm."

Oliver clucked his tongue. "It's a good thing you weren't this awkward with the Coward, darling."

"We talked the Coward out for months. This--" Geoffrey spread his hands. "You sprung this one on me."

"Jesus, Geoff." Ellen sat next to him and nuzzled his ear. "How can you have a bisexual affair for months and not think about this?"

Geoffrey shrugged. "I didn't plan for all of this. It just kind of happened."

Oliver laughed and moved close enough to kiss him. "Thank goodness some of us are looking toward the future, then, isn't it."

"It's your job, more or less," Geoffrey agreed, and felt Oliver's lips twist into a smile against his. It was enough for a while, and more than enough, to kiss him as though that was all they were going to do, as if--for once--they had all day to relax. The simple human contact was grounding in ways any number of arguments weren't.

After some time--enough kisses that Geoffrey was having trouble thinking, let alone breathing, and Ellen's fingers on his nipples weren't helping with either--Oliver turned his head and made an effort to control his breathing. "God. Are you going to make me ask again?"

Geoffrey grinned at him. "I know you get off on repeating your notes."

Oliver rolled his eyes. "Not even in bed, darling." He fumbled in the sheets and found the lube, then flipped it over in his hand. "I could, if you wanted--"

"You're going to get stuck in another 'After you,' 'No, after you,' loop if I let you, aren't you?" Ellen said, and held out her hand for it. "I'd be glad to, unless you'd rather do this yourself."

Something like discomfort flickered across Oliver's face and was gone. "If it makes you happy, darling."

There was something wicked in Ellen's smile. "I like watching you fall apart." Her voice was light, but not entirely teasing.

Geoffrey laughed at her. "You're going to make me quote Lady Macbeth in bed if you keep that up."

"Geoffrey!" Oliver frowned. "I know we're not in the theater, but must you?"

"Oh, relax." Geoffrey kissed him again until Oliver stopped scowling and kissed him back. "Superstitions only hurt if you believe in them."

Oliver sighed and shook his shoulder lightly. "I do, so don't say it again."

"All right, sorry." Geoffrey suppressed the urge to mock him for it; doubtless it would come up again at a better time.

Ellen spread lubricant on her fingers and asked, "Just how slowly do you need me to take this?"

"I'm not in the mood for anything rough."

"All right."

Oliver's face with Ellen's finger inside him was somewhere between open and focused, his teeth worrying his kiss-swollen lips and his hands tight on Geoffrey's shoulders. "That's--God, Ellen--"

Geoffrey kissed him again so he wouldn't have to see him coming to pieces. It wasn't what he wanted from Oliver, not really: Oliver was supposed to be brilliant and mean, practically untouchable, not someone who pushed his erection against Geoffrey's hip, hard and damp, and shook.

There was nothing wrong with it--and God knew, he'd as much as begged for all of this, how many times over now--but it was still uncomfortable, as if he was seeing too much of Oliver, as if this was more revealing than anything else they'd done.

"There?" Ellen asked and Oliver hissed and pushed backward. "Oh, good," she said, and Geoffrey could hear her grinning.

"Mm," Oliver agreed. "More--yes."

"Should I--" Geoffrey reached for his cock, running his hand down Oliver's chest so it would be moderately clear what he was offering.

Oliver shook his head. "Not yet, no, you'll ruin my stamina, and--nn--I can't afford that."

Geoffrey laughed and let his hand settle on Oliver's hip. "You're not going to embarrass yourself in front of us, for God's sake. As if we've never met. Or done this before."

"Not this, precisely," Oliver corrected him. His eyes were slightly glassy. "Or you wouldn't be so--" he broke off, interrupting himself with a groan.

Ellen put her hand on Geoffrey's. "Too much?"

"No, just enough. If you'd--" Oliver groped on the bed "--Geoff, where'd the damned condom go?"

It took Geoffrey a moment to find the condom and another moment to open it. "I--"

"Let me." Oliver took it from him and put it on him, frowning slightly with the strain of concentration before he looked up and smiled, looking half-dazed with sex already. "Lie back for me."

Of all the layers of what they were doing, the easiest one was following Oliver's direction. Ellen moved to lie beside Geoffrey and took his hand, "God, you're beautiful," she said in his ear. "I love you so damned much."

"Give me a hand for balance," Oliver said, and moved awkwardly to straddle Geoffrey, his face flushed. He smiled more sincerely than he had in what felt like years. "I won't be able to do this long--my knee will give out, but--just for a while."

Geoffrey closed his eyes when Oliver took hold of his cock, for the long moments it took to find the right angle for this, and when Oliver gasped, he squeezed them more tightly. "God, Geoffrey." Oliver sounded choked.

He tried not to move, not to push this any faster than they were going. "Are you--is this all right?"

Oliver laughed. "All right, God, yes, you're perfect. Push up to meet me, just--slowly--oh, like that, please--"

It felt both perfectly normal, hot and slick and wonderful in the way that sex could be, and completely strange when Geoffrey opened his eyes. Oliver was watching him with an expression so intent he might have been making notes then and there, waiting to correct some flaw in Geoffrey's performance. But it was the expression he wore when things were going beautifully, when he had no critiques to make and only praise to give.

"You feel amazing," Geoffrey said, and wanted to take the words back, not because they were false but because they were trite.

Oliver closed his eyes for a second longer than a blink and shifted his weight, rocking up and sinking down again. "So do you." When he opened his eyes again, he was still smiling, and he moved one hand to cup Geoffrey's cheek. "I--a little faster--"

It was better than he'd let himself expect it to be, more than good enough to make Geoffrey want to kick himself for the years they'd spent not doing this. He was on the very of saying as much when Oliver winced and said, "Enough, God--let me move onto my side."

With Ellen, it would be a smooth process, the easiest thing in the world to hold her a little more tightly for half a second and move with her before they began again. It was more of a production with Oliver, with more hesitations and two false starts. "Sorry," Geoffrey said, and kissed him. "I could use some practice with this blocking, I guess."

Oliver laughed and pulled him closer. "You're doing fine. Isn't he, Ellen?"

Ellen ran her fingers through Geoffrey's sweaty hair. "You're fine, darling."

Once they found their rhythm again, it couldn't last half as long as Geoffrey would have liked. He tried closing his eyes again, but that made it worse. Oliver squeezed his hips and urged him on, saying, "Fuck, just like that--God, you're going to kill me--"

"That's, I--" Geoffrey reached for his cock and this time Oliver pushed into his hand, shaking and straining.

"God, please, Geoff--" Oliver kissed him aggressively for a moment before he let go again, putting his hand on the back of Geoffrey's head to hold him there. "Just a little more--oh, I--"

Geoffrey laughed and squeezed him more tightly. "As if I'd stop now."

"Perfect, you're, oh fuck--" Oliver tugged him into another harsh kiss and came, slick and hot on their stomachs.

There had to be something to say to that, some phrase that captured the whole thing and the overwhelming mess of the way it all felt, but Geoffrey could only groan and push into him a few more ragged times before it was too much, too long, too right to bear, and he came, his arms wrapped tight around Oliver while his hips thrust.

"That looked like fun," Ellen said, and it sounded as though she was smiling.

Geoffrey reached back blindly and she took his hand, putting her arm around him. "It was," he said, and yawned.

Oliver kissed him lightly and patted his shoulder. "As enjoyable as that was, I'd better move now before my aging joints seize up."

"Don't go far," Geoffrey said, and did his best to ease the process of disentangling and cursory clean-up while he was falling asleep.

When that was done, Oliver embraced him again and sighed, a deep, satisfied noise that seemed to come from his toes. "I believe I might be ready to take on _Hamlet_ tomorrow."

Geoffrey leaned back against Ellen, who nuzzled his neck, and said, "With new eyes, even. When I can think again."

"Get some rest," Ellen said in his ear. "You both need it, don't you."

"Desperately," Oliver agreed, and fell asleep before Geoffrey could think of anything else to say; it was a matter of moments before he lost consciousness, too.

It was Tuesday before Geoffrey had a chance to eat breakfast with Ellen rather than dashing out the door with a handful of toast and pretending that that would be enough. She looked at him over the corn flakes and said, "We need to talk."

He closed his eyes and picked up his coffee, reaching toward her with his other hand. "What is it?"

She sighed and put her hand on top of his. He looked at her, but he couldn't read her expression. "This sex thing just isn't going to work. I mean, it's great between us, and I--" she smiled and squeezed his fingers "--I love you. But this whole thing with Oliver is getting in the way."

"All right," Geoffrey said, and turned his hand over to lace their fingers together. "It's not like we're going to have time to do anything like Saturday again until we open."

Ellen pressed her lips together. "Even then, I think this needs to be over."

The choice between losing Ellen or letting things go back to normal with Oliver was no choice at all. Geoffrey would be an idiot to protest, and there were an infinite and expanding number of things to do between now and the moment when it might practically matter in any case. "If that's what you need, then it's over."

"Tell Oliver; you'll see him ages before I do, after all." Ellen squeezed his hand and let him go. "See you at two or so."

"See you," Geoffrey said, and stood.

*

"Oliver," Geoffrey said when he got to the theater, and meant to say, "We need to talk," though he didn't expect Oliver to take the phrase well.

Oliver looked up with the briefest of smiles and an overall harried demeanor. "Thank God you're here, Geoff. We got a call from the fabric suppliers for the costume shop, and we're going to have to rethink the whole damned court."

That was a much more pressing problem than Ellen's concerns, and dealing with the problem pushed the issue of emotional entanglements and the ends thereof out of Geoffrey's mind for the rest of the day, then the rest of the week, and longer.

They made it to the week before rehearsals when Oliver stopped in the middle of brainstorming--something about the symbology of Claudius's retinue--and kissed Geoffrey. It was evening, making the offices relatively safe from interruption, but that wasn't the problem.

"Don't," Geoffrey said, remembering Ellen's request all too late.

"What?" Oliver frowned at him, not letting him go. He looked as though he'd been making up for missed sleep with coffee and missed dreams with booze, not unlike Geoffrey. "Did we have another discussion after four in the morning and a bottle of wine, or is this new?"

Geoffrey bit his lip and tried to remember how Ellen had posed the situation to him. It had seemed moderately reasonable at the time. "I, well, you haven't been--and we haven't--and I've hardly seen Ellen for weeks, and she's not comfortable with, with this."

"Ah." Oliver still had his hand on Geoffrey's shoulder, warm against the fabric of his sweater. "When did she say that?"

"I don't know when, but she said it. A while ago. And I forgot, because it wasn't important, and you weren't, we weren't doing anything except working."

Oliver sighed and took a step back from him, looking wry. "You broke up with me and you didn't even bother to tell me?"

Geoffrey tried to smile at this and succeeded, mostly. "I couldn't exactly say 'I don't think we should see each other any more,' could I? That wasn't the problem."

"Right." Oliver ran his hand through his hair and glared at his feet. "So is this about you and me, or you and me and Ellen?"

"I didn't ask." Oliver winced, and Geoffrey sighed. "Look, I'm sorry. I should've said something, but it really didn't matter, did it?"

Oliver said nothing for a long moment. "It didn't matter," he said eventually, and it sounded more like an echo than an agreement. "I suppose, on the moment-to-moment level, there's no practical difference between the lack of physical interaction because we are both too fucking tired to stand and the lack of physical interaction because it would offend someone else's sensibilities." He closed his eyes. "Assuage my ego, would you? Tell me it's all Ellen's idea."

Geoffrey hesitated longer than he would have thought he might, faced with that request. "It was. It is." He shrugged, only realizing afterward that Oliver wasn't looking and didn't see the gesture. "I love her."

"I'm sure you do." Oliver shook his head, opened his mouth, closed it, and eventually said, "One thing."

"What?" Geoffrey took half a step back, ready to avoid anything that broke his agreement with Ellen in word or spirit.

"What possessed you to do all of this in the first place? To kiss me."

Geoffrey pinched the bridge of his nose. "You never ask the easy questions."

"No," Oliver said, and his tone could have been gentle if he hadn't sounded like he would rather have been drinking. "I do try to avoid facile interpretations."

"I don't know why I did it the first time," Geoffrey admitted, because the gap in his memory that covered that particular night had never healed itself. "The second time, for curiosity. And the third--" he wasn't going to blush, or look away. No playing this coquettishly; there was no point. "The third time, because the second was worth repeating. And--" he waved a hand "--on from there, similarly."

Oliver folded his arms. "Well, that's something of a balm to my wounded pride. Thank you."

"The sex was also good," Geoffrey added.

It made Oliver laugh once and turn away from him. "I think we're done for today."

"God, there's still so much to do." Geoffrey put a hand on his shoulder, and let go when Oliver flinched. "I won't mention it again."

"Won't you?" Oliver blinked several times, then looked at him. "You have no say in all of this?" He frowned. "Jesus, next season we're doing the Scottish Play, then, if I have to watch her lead you around the place like she's the only damn thing that matters."

Geoffrey swallowed. "If it'd help."

"Of course it wouldn't help!" Oliver covered his face with one hand. "I resent being treated as an accessory."

"Oh, fuck off, you're not." Geoffrey put his hands in his pockets.

"A discarded accessory." Oliver blew out his breath and glared at the floor.

"Stop it. You're my best friend, for fuck's sake. You're my director, you're--" Geoffrey shook his head. "You're a whole lot of things, and you're not a damn accessory to anything at all."

"Except your all-important love affair." Oliver spread his hands. "No, I know, I'm not going to try to talk you away from her, but really, Geoff, go home for the day. I have an appointment."

Geoffrey frowned at him. "With what, your liquor cabinet?"

"Yes. I'll see you tomorrow if I can stand you again by then." Oliver opened the office door and made a gesture as if he was ushering Geoffrey out. "If you find me dead at my desk, you know what to do."

Geoffrey hesitated in the doorway, arrested by both the image and its implications. "Don't joke about that."

For a second, Oliver's smile was entirely too reminiscent of a skull's grimace. "You promised."

"In the first place, I was drunk, and in the second place, don't give yourself alcohol poisoning. All right?"

Oliver shrugged. "I don't have that much here. Get out before I leave and find somewhere more fruitful for my binge."

"I can't do this play without you," Geoffrey said, trying to give him some reason to practice moderation while backing out the door.

"I know. Get out of my sight." Oliver closed the door in his face.

As breakups went, Geoffrey had had far worse. He waited for a few moments to see if Oliver was going to relent, then went home.

"Who the hell are you?" Ellen asked, grinning and hugging him. "I wasn't expecting you until after midnight."

"I told Oliver about the whole--" Geoffrey waved a hand, trying to come up with a gentle term and failing "--ultimatum. And he's upset, but not horribly."

Ellen let him go, frowning at him as though he'd confessed to something far more dire than that. "What took you so long? Geoffrey, we talked about that weeks ago. What have you been doing?"

"_Hamlet_. What do you think?"

"Don't lie to me." Ellen folded her arms. "God, don't."

Geoffrey covered his face with his hands, trying to find the right words to calm her down. "I'm not lying to you. I haven't, not from the start, and I'm not going to start now. What kind of asshole do you take me for?"

"I don't know. I thought I could trust you, but I thought you told him ages ago." Ellen took a deep breath. "You honestly haven't--"

"No." Geoffrey dropped his hands and scowled at her. "Nothing. Nothing but talking about the fucking play, day after day after day, until half an hour ago, and you know, he didn't shout, and he's drinking, and he's probably halfway to a fucking coma by now, but he doesn't want to talk to me and I don't blame him."

Something in that got through to Ellen; her eyes widened. "Did he fire you?"

"No, no. Just threw me out. Said I should try again tomorrow." Geoffrey sighed. "Maybe I should call and see if he's all right."

Ellen put her hand on his shoulder. "I'm sure Oliver can take care of himself."

Geoffrey snorted and started for the telephone. "He's been better lately--sort of. Or at least he's been too busy to drink alone, which is hell on my liver but at least it's companionable. Whereas this--" he got to the phone before Ellen did and dialed Oliver's direct line.

It rang four times before Ellen said, "I'm not surprised he's not answering."

Geoffrey scowled at the voicemail message and hung up. "I should go over there again."

Ellen gave him a pitying smile. "If he's not answering the phone, he's hardly going to let you in."

"Maybe not, but I shouldn't have left in the first place." The longer he thought of it, the guiltier he felt. "Or--hell, I could've just said I had a headache or something."

"Weren't you just trying to convince me you're honest?" Ellen tilted her head to one side,  
studying him. "There was probably a better time to mention it, but if it hasn't come up yet, maybe not."

"Come with me," Geoffrey said, catching her by the hand. "We can throw pebbles at his window until he gives up."

"God, no." Ellen pulled her hand away. "You don't even know for certain where he is, and he doesn't want to talk to you. Can you blame him, really? You did just sort of dump him."

"Sort of?" Geoffrey closed his eyes. "I need--I can't deal with this, not on top of everything else." He turned toward the door. "I'll see you later."

Ellen followed him. "Where are you going?"

"I don't know. Nowhere, maybe. The river. Anywhere I can get away from myself."

"You're not going to drink yourself into a stupor without me," Ellen said, and when he pushed the door open she was right behind him. "Whatever happens, it's not your fault. He's an adult, he makes his own choices, and it wasn't even your idea, was it?"

Geoffrey took her hand on the sidewalk. "That doesn't make it better."

Ellen squeezed his hand. "You did point out that it was my idea, right?"

"Eventually."

"Then stop worrying so much. Whatever happens, you did the right thing."

When Geoffrey got to the theater the next morning, Oliver wasn't there, which he took as a moderately positive sign. It was ten-o'clock before he limped in wearing dark glasses and rumpled clothing. By then, Geoffrey had three poorly executed but evocative sketches for Claudius's retinue. "Are you all right?" he asked, hiding the sketches under his script.

"No," Oliver said. "I'm never drinking again."

"I'll believe that when I see it."

Oliver sat down slowly, groaning. "I hate everything. Including you, in case you're wondering. And love in general."

Geoffrey nodded and tried to look sympathetic. "How about the play?"

"Oh, God. I hate the play, too." Oliver leaned his head against the back of his chair, slouching. "If it wasn't for that, I'd tell you to go away for a few months and leave me in peace with my broken heart. But no." He sat up with a sound that implied a Herculean effort. "Instead I'm doomed to talk to you every day for the next six months." He smiled, looking as though he was about to throw up. The level of melodrama was getting on Geoffrey's nerves. "Fine. Distract me from the misery of life. The play?"

Geoffrey took out the sketches and explained them, speaking quietly and ignoring Oliver's multitudinous winces and overemphasized complaints. He always complained about hangovers.

At least he wasn't trying to talk Geoffrey into going back on his word to Ellen.

*

The fragile silence lasted until a week before _Hamlet_ opened.

"Damn it, no." Oliver stood up and said, "Geoffrey, Ellen, stay here. The rest of you can go home early."

When the rush toward freedom had cleared out, Geoffrey said, "We talked about this." He had the notes from several different versions and visions penciled in his script, and though he no longer knew which of them had come up with the particular blocking for the scene that began, "Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remember'd," he knew they'd worked it all out. "I mean, of course we talked about this, but we agreed on it."

"It's not working." Oliver scowled at him. "Ellen, you should throw the fucking things at him if he gets that antic."

"'Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind' is a hypocritical line if I'm going to be tossing things at his head," Ellen pointed out.

"Ophelia's losing her mind, too." Oliver gave her a tight, uncomfortable smile. "Try it again from the entrance. And aim for sensitive spots."

"Wait, no, don't." Geoffrey handed Ellen the pencils and that were standing in for real props. "She may be losing her mind, but not that much, not yet. She'd be aware of it if she was that far off the deep end."

Oliver glanced at his watch. "Try it once this way and we'll see how it goes," he said in the tone of voice that brooked no argument. "But toss them low, darling. It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye."

"I'm not that bad," she said defensively.

Geoffrey had to admit that attempting to dodge her missiles added to the frantic nature of the scene, but it was hard to tell whether it was going to work in the overall context. "I don't like it," he said afterward.

"You don't have to. It stays." Oliver picked up a pencil that had rolled to the edge of the stage. "I'll get the timing pinned down for you tonight, and we'll do it with more violence tomorrow."

Ellen laughed. "Do we really need more violence?"

"Larger missiles, at least." Oliver closed his script. "That's all I needed you for. See you tomorrow."

Geoffrey glanced at the stage manager, who said "Good night," and left.

Ellen shrugged. "Thanks. I need a shower, anyway."

The late introduction of ballistic remembrances was bothering Geoffrey too much to let it all slide. "I'll see you at home," he told Ellen, and she frowned slightly and kissed him hard, lingering long enough that he considered going with her. But that would have meant letting Oliver make the play wrong, and he couldn't do that.

Oliver gave Geoffrey an irritated look. "You're not going to argue me out of this easily."

"So it won't be easy. I hate it. It's not Ellen's Ophelia, it's not even consistent with the rest of the play, and I don't know why you're insisting on it."

"Bye," Ellen said, and left.

Oliver rolled his eyes and looked away from him, refusing to engage in a real debate. "Because it gives us foreshadowing, darling. Because she's going to commit suicide in not so very many scenes, and while she's been upset, she hasn't been losing her mind visibly."

Geoffrey ran his hand through his hair. "It's not just that you want Ellen to throw things at me, then?"

He'd said it to break the tension, and it worked up to a point. Oliver gave him a tight smile. "Not just that, no. How long are you going to fight about this?"

"Until you listen."

They were alone in the theater, backdrop of so many debates, and it was like every other time Oliver had gotten some terrible idea in his head and Geoffrey had argued him out of it or vice versa. But it wasn't, because Oliver was looking away from him again and his voice was too quiet. "Why are you taking a stand about this?"

"I hate it." Geoffrey folded his arms. "It throws off Ophelia's arc, it throws off Hamlet's arc unless you want me to toss posies back at her, and it's going to come off as slapstick."

"What if Ellen had come up with it?" Oliver asked, twiddling a pencil between his fingers. "Would you argue with her?"

"Sure. It would still be a bad idea, whoever proposed it."

"Really." It wasn't a question. "You're entirely too caught up in her, you know."

Geoffrey stared at him, trying to find the logical connection between the blocking and this strange accusation. "I love her. How is that 'too caught up'?"

Oliver scowled. "You wouldn't argue about it if she said you should do this whole thing in a tuxedo. You'd go along with it, and maybe you'd hate it or maybe you'd find some deeper meaning in it because Ellen was the one who told you what to do, but you'd nod your head and ignore me when I tried to tell you it was a terrible idea."

"You're not changing the costuming."

"No! Of course not. God, is that all you heard me say?" Oliver took Geoffrey by the shoulders, closer than they'd stood for weeks, and frowned at him. "You'll argue with me about this for days if I let you, but you didn't say a damned thing to her about anything that actually mattered."

Geoffrey closed his eyes, trying to figure out what he could do without making them both angrier at him than they already were. "She wasn't going to change her mind. I couldn't push her about it, not like I can push you about this, because you're going to forgive me and she might not have, and then where would I be?"

"Alone in the world. Unloved until you opened your damned eyes and realized it wasn't like that." Oliver let him go but didn't back away. "I miss you."

"How?" Geoffrey spread his hands. "I'm right here. The only thing that's different is, well, we can't."

Oliver took a deep breath. "Yes. If I didn't think you'd run away if I so much as kissed you, I'd--"

"Don't. Please don't." Geoffrey smiled at him, though it felt weak. "You talked me into that ridiculous, scenery-chewing Mark Antony. I don't trust you not to talk me into anything else."

"You make me want to try so very badly." Oliver shook his head. "Perhaps it's better to go over your head about this. You won't argue on your own behalf and you won't listen, but I can argue and perhaps Ellen will pay more attention to me than you are."

Geoffrey could imagine the scene; he estimated it would take all of ten seconds for Ellen to make her feelings extremely clear. "Good luck with that."

"Thank you, darling." Oliver took a step back and some of the tension faded, going from topics they shouldn't be talking about to topics they could talk to death. "So. No Ophelia throwing things?"

"No. It's wrong for the part, it's wrong for Ellen, and it's wrong for the way I'm doing Hamlet in that scene."

Oliver folded his arms, giving Geoffrey a skeptical look. "Convince me that Hamlet doesn't deserve it at this point."

Geoffrey rubbed his hand over his eyes and took a few steps away from him, thinking about the scene. "It's not about Hamlet, it's about Ophelia, and how she reacts to stress. She's upset--and of course she's upset--but I'm not pushing her to the point of a violent outburst. Not yet."

It was a few moments before Oliver said, "And when she is violent, she directs it against herself." There was a note of resignation in his tone.

"Yes, definitely." Geoffrey smiled. "She doesn't get into fights--that's Laertes, not Ophelia. When she loses her composure, it's in self-recrimination, not retribution."

"Fair enough." Oliver sighed. "But she may shout at you instead."

Geoffrey shrugged. "I think I've earned that much."


End file.
